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The Internship Path to Employment: Avetec Partnership with Clark State Helps Students Land Jobs

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10/31/11

SPRINGFIELD, OHIO – Each year, students of Clark State Community College take advantage of internship opportunities that equip them with professional experience as they enter today’s competitive job market. Businesses in the surrounding area, including Avetec in Springfield, Ohio, partner with the college to make these opportunities possible for students.

In the summer of 2011, Todd Shroyer, an Urbana resident and student at Clark State Community College travelled to Washington State to intern at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories (PNNL) in Richland.

The internship was made possible through the Cybersecurity program at Clark State in partnership with Avetec, a three-year program funded by an Applied Technologies Education grant from the National Science Foundation from2009 to 2012. The ten-week internship offered students from Clark State a chance to gain professional and technical skills in the workplace with other students and a faculty member at PNNL.

Shroyer, who will graduate in June with a degree in Cybersecurity and Network Administration from Clark State, said, “My internship really opened my eyes up there to the way things are moving.”

Shroyer says the ten-week program that focused on high performance clustered computing at PNNL helped him get his foot in the door to the type of work he will encounter in his career field and introduced him to a handful of new technologies.

“I grew both professionally and personally,” adds Shroyer who explains that he not only gained technical business skills from the experience, but took away some valuable lessons from team building and time spent with his professors and fellow interns.

“We fed off each other’s knowledge and learned a lot from each other,” said Shroyer

Scott Eckard, a 2011 graduate, also benefited from internship programs through a Clark State and Avetec partnership. Eckard began working at Avetec in Springfield in November 2011 where he worked creating the Teach STEM website. Eckard also worked heavily with Palantir, a specialized software platform, also becoming a certified trainer and working to develop new uses for the program.

“It’s been a great experience,” said Eckard. “I’ve met a lot of new people and had the chance to network with a lot of people.”

Like Shroyer, Eckard appreciates the knowledge he gained from his fellow interns and coworkers, who he explains came from a variety of educational backgrounds and career fields.

“Everyone has their own individual projects they’re working on, but we still come together to feed off one another’s ideas.” 

Both Shroyer and Eckard have recently accepted job offers in the past two weeks. Shroyer will be working at the Honda Research Center where he will continue his work in information technology and cybersecurity while Eckard will be contracting with Dell at St. Rita’s hospital in Lima as a Technical Analyst.

Companies interested in intern development can contact Avetec’s Education Department for information or email Cathy Balas at cbalas@avetec.org.