PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Much of my time during the first trimester was spent setting up internships for some of our third-year students who are ready to venture out into the workplace after completing their core courses. One of my responsibilities is outreach and community engagement so I found myself calling on our community partners to find placements. For some reason, we had expected less than 10 students to intern and we found ourselves with 23! It took a bit of scrambling, but we found some organizations eager to give them an opportunity.

Several internship sites were companies that have become great partners of ours, such as Children’s Hospital, BMI Credit Union, Franklin Park Conservatory, COSI, and DSCC. We had educational partner sites including the Ohio Board of Regents, the Ohio Department of Education, the Ohio Resource Center, and PAST Foundation as well as OSU placements at Byrd Polar Research Lab, the Center for Automotive Research, the Ohio Supercomputer Center, the Electrosciences Lab and Waterman Dairy Farm.

Battelle hosted four interns in several areas. Mitch worked with Melissa Fiala on the Battelle World publication, Ronny worked with Brian Kritzstein producing a demo video of Starlight software (a Battelle creation), Michael learned about design from ProEngineer designers and Nikki spent her time experiencing Battelle’s impact on the community in the Corporate Philanthropy office.

Nikki, in particular, blossomed before our very eyes, as this real-world experience exposed her to many opportunities to help others. She had an interest in social work before, but after her time with Team Battelle and the organizations and agencies that Battelle helps support, she feels drawn to look for an opportunity to work in corporate giving and volunteer groups. She says she never knew there were so many ways to bring about positive change. An excerpt from one of her reflections:

This week I attended a meeting with Nancy Johnston and someone from the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization and was very surprised as to how much they reach out to the community and how Battelle really helps make that possible. I learned that the organization has a mentoring program for Hispanic youth and there’s a new program for youth whose parents are incarcerated which is called Imachi. This program was created because statistics show that 70% of youth follow their parents into prison. I realized that helping the community goes so much further than social work and I know I want to go into a career that helps the community.

During their time at Battelle, the new lobby wall was unveiled, and our student interns were tasked with giving demonstrations to staff on how to use it. They love to get a chance to turn the tables and be teachers to their professional mentors.

Every student in the intern program gained new appreciation for what it takes to be successful in the workplace and we looked for ways to make their experience richer as we work to improve the program.

Nikki, Ronny and Mitch show a visitor how to operate the interactive wall.