We mixed things up a bit for our September event, both with location and format. Given the topic, we hosted the event at Denison Edge, which is a really cool venue!

The topic was inspired by the experiences of a rising senior at Kenyon College that, despite excellent qualifications and impeccable due diligence, barely managed to land an analytics internship in the summer of 2024. Some relevant details of that internship:

• The company that hired him was a small agency that had not really thought about having an intern
• Through a string of improbable but fortunate events, they hired him for the summer
• The student had a great experience, and the agency found that he added real value to their work
• Things went so well that the company kept him on for ~10 hours/week once he returned to school in the fall

That’s the happiest of endings, sure, but the CbusDAW organizers were struck that it was almost certain that this specific tale represented countless simlar stories that never came to pass. And that’s a miss.

Consider:

• Companies of all sizes (including small ones!) have data at their disposal that is underutilized due to a lack of resources
• College students today—across all types of programs—are developing valuable skills in programming, statistics, and analytics in the classroom
• Academic programs recognize the importance of their students getting hands-on, real-world experience, and there are any number of resources in place to support getting them that experience

We brought together four panelists from central Ohio-based higher education to have a discussion about getting all of those factors to work together to create more win-win situations. The panelists:

Matt Miller Denison University	Nimet Alpay Franklin University
Tom Metzger The Ohio State University	Kristen Astorian Ohio Wesleyan University

While the initial idea for the panel was “internships,” the panelists made it clear that internships are simply one way for students to get real-world experience while delivering value to organizations. Many data and analytics programs—both undergraduate and graduate level—require a capstone project that works with an organization and their data to deliver value (and capstone projects have the benefit of having instructor oversight and coaching).

Some keys to making an internship successful:

• The project should be meaningful—using interns to work on projects that are menial doesn’t benefit the intern or the organization that hired them
• The project should be manageable—dropping an intern into a monstrously complex data environment with overly ambitious ideas for what they will be able to deliver in a finite period of time is setting them up for failure
• The intern should have a primary point of contact for oversight—this should be someone who actually wants to take on the work. They’re playing the role of a guide, mentor, and manager all at once.
• Consider pairing the intern with someone deeply knowledgeable of the data itself—it can take months to ramp up on the intricacies of many organizations data environments. While students do need to get exposure to the messiness of real-world data and the often-daunting level of effort to “clean it up” as part of a project, it can be useful to have someone who knows the ins and outs of the various tables assist them in getting queries written.

There are also a surprising number of programs (if only the moderator of the panel was not also the author of this post—something of a hindrance to note-taking!) that provide support to companies who are open to taking on interns (or to working with students on capstone or other projects):

• The career centers at most universities have staff who are deeply familiar both with there students and what it takes to scope work and provide support in order to make student work productive and impactful
• Through various programs (a range of funding sources), companies can actually have interns’ pay subsidized (partly or fully)! The career centers at any school can point interested companies to resources for that.

It was very clear that, once an organization tries out tapping into student talent, they consistently extend and expand their programs over time. Have you given that a thought? Reach out to one or more of the people above to find out more!