Each summer, students from the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics gain valuable professional-level exposure through internships. This year, young scholars were able to traverse the complications of COVID-19 by pursuing an array of internships, externships and other professional development opportunities. Each profile of this series will detail a Lerner student’s experiences working remotely on business-oriented projects.
Deborah Olaoye, a Class of 2021 management information systems (MIS) and marketing double major, spent her summer working as an information technology support analyst at W.L. Gore and Associates, an American multinational manufacturing company in Newark, Delaware.
Q: How did you find out about and choose this internship?
Olaoye: I found out about this internship through Handshake. After learning about the company and getting advice/feedback from a few people familiar with the organization I figured it’d be a great opportunity.
Q: How did the coronavirus response impact your internship search and working experience?
Olaoye: I was offered a position prior to everything shutting down in response to COVID-19. When everything finally began to shut down, Gore took the bull by the horns and offered a new completely virtual internship experience to keep the program going.
Q: What did you learn through this internship that you don’t think you would have learned anywhere else?
Olaoye: In addition to adding some new technical tools to my toolkit, I also learned to grow comfortable asking questions, reaching out for help and coming up with creative solutions to complex problems.
Q: What is the most exciting project or task that you have undertaken in your role?
Olaoye: I was able to create visualizations based on dynamic data intended to be utilized when decision making.
Q: What is an example of a time you were able to apply something you learned at Lerner to your role?
Olaoye: With my projects heavily depending on exploration, I was able to reel in my knowledge of Python programming language from my MISY courses and offer it as a potential solution when brainstorming.
Q: How do you think this internship will help you with your professional goals?
Olaoye: This internship has given me the opportunity to explore management information systems in practice and made me more decisive concerning the aspects of MIS I am passionate about.
Q: What are your plans or next steps in your career once this internship is over?
Olaoye: My plan is to graduate and head into the workforce.