By Jason Klaiber
Staff Writer
As the summer approaches, Bonaventure students may start looking for internships. The task to land these opportunities becomes a pressing matter for St. Bonaventure’s journalism and mass communication and business students, for which certain numbers of internship hours are required for graduation.
JMC majors need to complete at least 400 approved internship hours to earn a degree. Any type of job training done under professional supervision in a professional workplace qualifies as an approved internship. A quarter of this 400-hour requirement can be accomplished through on-campus experience. Patrick Vecchio, internship coordinator for the school of journalism and mass communication, said that the 100 hours spent interning on campus accommodates freshmen that wouldn’t normally secure an internship right away.
“It’s a whole different experience [from the classroom] to see how that knowledge works in a workplace,” Vecchio said. “You get a sense for what the priorities are in a professional workplace. You get a sense of what it’s like to deal with people. There are networking opportunities, too. Many internships lead to jobs later on.”
Vecchio recommended that, by the time senior year rolls around, a student should at least have an internship lined up to prevent the anxiety faced when scrambling for one, and if they already have an internship, they should exceed the required 400 hours.
“Four hundred is a floor, not a ceiling,” Vecchio said. “Quite frequently, you’ll have students doing 500, 600, 700 or 800 hours. Those are the students that are increasing their chances for professional success.”
He also suggests that students searching for internships should “put on [their] reporting hat[s]” in the sense that they should conduct a large amount of research for potential companies or other outlets. He suggested going online to narrow down a preferred employer and an applicable location and contact the company by phone, not email.
“You’ll want to do it earlier rather than later,” Vecchio said. “If I were advising a student about getting an internship for this coming summer, ideally that conversation should start sometime toward the end of the fall semester, so that the student can get in touch with the internship supervisor and say ‘I’d like to intern with you folks… what do I need to do between now and next summer to be considered as a candidate.’ [Then] make a follow-up call next semester.”
In the past, St. Bonaventure journalism students have interned for employers such as The Washington Post, Glamour Magazine, “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” Sirius XM Satellite Radio, and the Philadelphia 76ers. On-campus internships include working in the sports information office, the office of marketing and communications, and campus media, such as The Bona Venture or The Buzz.
Junior journalism and mass communication major Jackie Roberts, a communications research intern at the St. Vincent of DePaul Society, advises that students shouldn’t disregard any possibilities when it comes to internships.
“You never know what you could gain from working with a small company,” Roberts said. “Always keep your eyes open for small opportunities that might lead you to a bigger one.”
Business students studying in four of the five majors in the School of Business—marketing, management, industrial management and accounting—also require internship hours to graduate. Marketing, management and industrial management majors all need to complete 150 internship hours. Accounting majors need 400 hours.
The process of finding an internship is supervised by Mike Kasperski, internship director for the School of Business. Students must submit a job description, which Kasperski reviews to make sure it meets major requirements and entails responsibilities that are related to business.
Kasperski works with the Career and Professional Readiness Center (CPRC) to point aspiring interns in the right direction by connecting them with alums and businesspeople.
In addition, Kasperski recommended attending events on campus, visiting the alumni office and setting up LinkedIn accounts, which can connect students with networking groups of St. Bonaventure graduates based on area.
Junior accounting major Nate Parker, a Manna Pro Products, LLC intern, said that business students should put themselves in a position to meet people, such as representatives from business organizations.
Some of these avenues that students have pursued include banks such as M&T and First Niagara, as well as such industries as Xerox and Lockheed Martin. On-campus internships open to business majors include work through the school’s business office.
“Start networking and start early,” Kasperski said. “There are all these different avenues to do that.”
