by Zheng Fan, Director of Enterprise Systems
This summer I was lucky to have an opportunity to lead the first OIT sponsored student internship program and to have a role of mentor to several student interns. For me it turned out to be a really great experience – challenging, enjoyable and rewarding. What I valued the most from this experience was the opportunity to be a part of student interns’ success and support for Rice V2C2 goal.
Mentoring was a truly challenging and rewarding experience. I wasn’t alone in this journey. Thanks to the support from Klara, Randy, fellow mentors and colleagues, I was able to step out of my busy day-to-day responsibilities and team up with fellow mentors to work together to make the internship a success. What I enjoyed the most is the opportunity to get to know each of the amazingly talented Rice student interns and help them overcome challenges and succeed in several real-world projects, such as Rice Global Website Development to improve Student/Faculty Pages, OpenScholar Template Design, Status Page Widget Development, Data Analytics for FE&P and so forth. All those real-world work assignments were designed to help interns test drive their careers and gain hands-on experiences as a professional in the IT field.
Another rewarding experience from this internship leadership journey was witnessing how the internship program was able to transform and help prepare the students for career success. Many project tasks required the interns to collaborate with other OIT staff, participate in discussions, share their ideas, and present their prototyped work. While learning new software development skills, the interns improved their soft skills for better problem solving, critical thinking, communication, and presentation. Many of the interns are international students coming from different cultural backgrounds. This internship also provided them an opportunity to be exposed to the daily operations inside OIT and learn about the American workplace culture, values, and expectations.
I am looking forward to 2019 for our next OIT sponsored summer internship program for Rice students!
Five of the 10 summer interns.
From left to right: Yijun He, Eva Ma, Kangkang Li, Weiheng Qiu, and Jialu Xu.
Interns’ Perspective
Yijun He: “I’ve had a fulfilling summer. OIT has provided an amazing project, which closely aligns with the real day-to-day job as a software engineer and helped me to be in touch with not only the technology, but also the industry-like work and life style.”
Eva Ma: :My mentor and the other interns were extremely helpful. They were always willing to discuss with me when I was exploring something new.”
Kangkang Li: “The benefits of the internship program included the valuable chance to experience the professional IT workplace.”
Weiheng Qiu: “When I was stuck in a problem or not sure which design was better, my mentor explained patiently to me and helped me get on the right track. This taught me a lot and gave me a deeper understanding of this project.”
Jialu Xu: “I think the most useful thing I got from this internship is that now I can showcase what I built to employers confidently to demonstrate my ability to grasp many technologies in short period of time.”