Internships are often a requirement in a college student’s curriculum, and at Florida A&M the university offers them to students.
These internships serve as gateways for students to get a feel for what it is like to work in their future career field. They also help students create mutually beneficial relationships with companies that can lead to possible jobs.
Graduate student Daniel Joseph serves as an accounting intern with Metz Culinary Management at the university. His day to day duties as an accounting intern are to distribute sales data for all eating locations on campus with daily transaction values of over $20,000.
“My job serves the campus by providing accurate records to our catering partners to find best food options for students based on the demand shown by their purchases,” Joseph said.
Joseph landed the internship by networking with a senior intern with the company. Based on his aptitude in accounting there was not a problem with him landing the job.
Internships offered at the university vary in different fields of work. School of Journalism & Graphic Communication student Elijah Rutland was hired by FAMU’s Office of University Housing as a graphic design intern.
Rutland assisted housing in creating graphics for its residents and event flyers.
When asked would he recommend this opportunity to other students, Rutland said, “I’d say it depends on the student honestly. If you’re just starting out in graphic design and have no experience then maybe I’d recommend it, but if you have experience and have worked with clients or have your own design business, I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Rutland stayed with housing for only one month due to the workload becoming too much on top of his course work.
“At first it was but the workload plus the demands plus the fact that we had to work 20 hours a week at the office. It became too much for me,” he said.
Fourth year business administration student Jada Stevens did not find it hard to manage school while interning with FAMU’s athletic department because most of her intern duties took place after classes.
“My role as part of the A team was marketing and game day operations intern. My tasks included assisting and coordinating game day happenings, giving prospective athletes tours of the campus, coming up with promotional tools to increase game attendance and assisting with game day operations,” Stevens said.