 Welcome to Education Matters on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Carol Monly. Our show today is called Career Kickstart Internships at UH Charlotte College of Business, and we're going to talk about students getting job experience with school credit and pay. Hands-on experience makes a difference in finding the right job. Businesses also get a head start in finding good employees, so internships are a win for businesses too. If you want to ask a question or make a comment, you can tweet us at thinktechhi or call us at 374-2014. Everyone can remember, sometimes painfully, their very first job, their first break in the world of work. Internships make that transition a natural part of a college education. Charlotte College of Business at UH has an internship program that was not a high priority for the college 20 years ago, placing only about 25 students each semester. But in the year 2000, our guest, Marcia Anderson, was hired as internship director and then as assistant dean to build the program. Currently, our other guest, Rick Farley, is the director of the Office of Internships and Career Services that oversees a program of more than 450 internships a year now, both in Hawaii and internationally. So, welcome, Rick. Welcome, Marcia. Thank you. Thank you for many, many years, including when she was the internship director. So, I'm going to start with Marcia. So, tell us a little bit about what is an internship and a little bit about the program in the year 2000 for the College of Business. An internship is kind of a trial run for both the student and the company. What I've seen the most benefit is employers get to look beyond the grades a student has to see what kind of person they are and how they will work with the office. It's also an opportunity where students shed their slippers and t-shirts and shorts and they learn to present themselves professionally in the world of work. So, it's a good reality check for all the coursework they've had. And let's see, the second part of your question was... So, in the year 2000, internships have been around for a long time, right? And we know them from White House interns and we even have interns here at Think Tech. We have middle school and college and middle school students. But the College of Business internships are focused on business. And then in the year 2000, when you started, was it a very important part of the curriculum? There was an adjunct professor in accounting who managed the 20 or 25 students this semester that mostly were accounting interns. But when David McLean became head of the Shidler College of Business, he wanted to put more priority on it. So, I was hired full-time to develop that. That meant going out into the community, talking to businesses. It also meant following every lead that he brought back, that he'd met with someone that said, here's a business card, follow up. And so we did. And I think it grew almost double the first year and Rick has just increased it astronomically since then. So, there was a need from the company side and I think from the student side both. So, it's really worked out. Yeah. So, it seemed like there was a shift. So, up to that point, would you say, and I know this is true, for instance, in law schools too, is that the curriculum itself was very coursework heavy, right? You wanted academic credit for classroom situations. But that has been a kind of a slow realization that actually hands-on experience out in the community, out in the workforce is actually very meaningful, very important, and actually provides benefits beyond academic coursework that typically we think of when we say going to school. Absolutely. Because coursework is great. It teaches a lot of theory that is very valuable to students. But until they actually get out there and practice it, they don't even know if it's what they really want to do. And we get a lot of situations where a student will say, I'm a marketing major. But then you ask them, well, where do you want to go with that? And they don't know that next step. You know, where am I going with this? Am I going in advertising, going in public relations? They don't know. So the internship gives them an opportunity to go out and try something in this area and then try something in a different area until they find their niche. And once a student finds what they really are a passion for, then they can see their education increasing, their enthusiasm for the coursework increasing. Their context. And they can't wait to get started. That is a real positive of the internship program. It also sometimes can show them what they don't want to do. And I've seen many times where a student has this sense that this is what it's going to be like. And then when they do it, they go, I hated it. I'll never go back. And I said, there's nothing more valuable than finding out now, finding early what you don't like to do. So Shadler is both undergraduate and graduate, right? So is this an internship program for both undergraduates and graduates? Yeah. My particular focus is the undergraduates. But the undergraduates also do have an internship opportunity. They primarily are focused on the summer only internship. So they do full-time work during the summer. But our program is year-round for the undergraduates. So do you have to be an upper-class student? Or can freshmen and sophomores also participate? Well, up until only a few years ago, the Shadler College was a junior-senior-only program. And now we've started a program called the Direct Admit Program for short. But Direct Admit Program, where we take in outstanding young freshmen from all over the country who have very high SAT scores, very high GPAs. It's very competitive. And those students are allowed to start their internships right away. And so is it by semester then? Are there only semester internships? It is because it's tied to a class. However, if the student finds an internship that they really, really enjoy and the company wants to keep them on, we can find ways to have them register for a second class and take it again and extend that period. So what do you mean it's related to a class? OK. We have an internship class where they receive academic credit for the work they're doing on their internship. Is it based on the number of hours of the internship? Yeah. An internship is required to have a minimum of 150 hours during a timeframe of a semester. And that breaks down to about 10 hours a week. But that's the minimum requirement. And how many credits do you get for that? They get three credits. And the credits go towards their degree. But it's not a requirement. So the students can go through Schuyler and never do an internship. Is there a maximum number of internships they can do? No. It's time restrictive. A student can only do so many. And we don't recommend doing more than one in the semester. And we do have students that try to do multiple internships this semester. But it's just a matter of we tell them you really want to put your emphasis on the quality of work that you're doing and not just spread yourself so thin that something's going to lose out, whether it be your GPA or the quality of work you're doing on your internship. So then how do you match? So a student comes in and says, I want to do an internship. I think I want to go into retail. So they register for your internship. And then do they identify the internship opportunity or do you? Yeah, good question. Because what we do is, there's just me. And there's 1,000 undergraduates. So what we've done is we've created a website where we have an ongoing live listing of all the internships that are available. So the idea is to make it as real to a student finding a job when they graduate. So they go to the website. They review all the different positions. And at any one time, we'll have 250 to 300 internships listed on that website currently. And then the students will go in and they'll search out all the different opportunities that match their interests. And then they can submit their resume to those companies. The companies will then call them in for an interview. They have to go through the interview process and then get selected for the internship. And I like that process because I want the students sometimes to fail in the interview interview process. Because that's a great way to learn. So we bring them back in the office and say, OK, what went on in this interview? What do you think was your weak spot? And we talked to them about how to develop their interviewing skills. And sometimes they'll send their resume out and not get any responses. And then we can pull back and look at their resume and say, OK, what is your resume stating that's not attracting attention? So we want the students to learn this process so that when they do graduate from the Scharler College of Business, they'll not only have a real good sense of who they are and get to have the professional experience, but also be able to handle it on their own. They don't have to depend on somebody else to do stuff for them. They know how to write a good resume. They know what a good interview is. So that's part of the process. So Marcia, when you started the program, though, you had no website, right? We didn't have a website. You had a binder? I had a binder, but it worked, you know, and they sat down with it. And usually they did at least one. We tried to get every student out for one, but that doesn't always work. But I've seen students this summer who have had three different internships, let's say a financial finance major, three different internships with really different settings. And so they learn where they fit in, where their major or concentration fits in with the world to work. Now, I've been involved in internships at the law school, but we did a lot of preparation in terms of before they actually went out looking at their resume, reviewing, interviewing skills, reviewing, you know, ways of selling themself in a way that would result in whether being hired or taking an internship. But what I'm hearing from Rick is that that's not the case. You know, it's more like jump in and... Oh, no, their resume has been reviewed. If they have a cover letter, that gets reviewed. And we were talking on the way down here today that there's some things that technology can't replace, and one is sitting down with a student and saying, tell us your story and trying to flesh that out in a resume so an employer can get an accurate sense of who that student is. So do you meet with all the students? Each of them? Almost. I meet with a lot. It's almost impossible to see them all. And some students, to be honest, don't really need our help. They're really self-starters and they've got everything together. They do have to have their resume reviewed before it gets sent out. So when they upload their resume to our website, they can't send it to a company without me or Patrick Stewart, my assistant, looking at it and reviewing it. So then if we see problems, we call them and explain to what the situation is. We teach them how to create a better document. And coach them on interviewer skills and clothing you mentioned. And we do mock interview sessions with the students. We have a program with one of our great alumni called Personal Branding Workshop, where we teach students how to understand who they are, their core values, how to express those core values through stories. So I mean, it's one thing to say, I'm a hard worker. But if you can tell a story about your growing up and watching your parents working for jobs each and things like that to prove you are a hard worker, it carries so much more power in an interview. So we do all those types of things. Again, there are some students that we offer them, we don't require them. And some students will take us up on them and some students won't. Although we do surveys at the end when they graduate and we see how much they're demanding as far as salary goes. And the salaries are the ones that did all the preparation, did the internships, did everything right. And the ones that we never saw are the ones that are getting the lower salaries. And so we tell them upfront, when we meet every student when they come through at the very early stages of their time at Schuyler, but still some will decide, I can do this myself. And that's okay. Sure. But yeah, it's a really good program. And it also allows companies to benefit of gaining access to the young talent here in Hawaii. I want to talk a little bit more about that particularly after the break. But so Marsha, when you develop the program to where it is to this point now where Rick has taken it on to much more important and bigger heights. Did you see the business community in any way resisting or how did they get, were they very interested in? I think generally they were interested in just anecdotally. I'd like to share one story. I had a young woman in accounting. She was a B student, I won't say an A student. And a local firm took her and said, we wouldn't normally have looked at her, but we decided to give her a chance as an intern. And she was ended up getting a permanent job with him. And he said, when we saw how she performed on the job, it didn't matter what her GPA was. So it's to the advantage of both the employer and to the student. And it's a wonderful thing when that happens. Right. Did that employer pay her or was she just getting school credit due? I believe she was paid. And it was tax time, you know, the second semester is a lovely time for interns to be thrown into into an accounting internship. So it worked out very well. And I think he was very happy with her performance. So and most a lot of the UH students, they want to stay in Hawaii if they can find a good job. And most of them are from here. Some of them want to go internationally, which has been a challenge for Rick. But it's it's really these are kids who are committed to this community. And that's it's really nice to give them a chance. Right. Well, we're already at break time. So we're going to take a short break and come back and talk more about the business side. This is Carol Mon Lee with Education Matters with my guest, Marsha Anderson and Rick Barley from Schilder College of Business. And we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark. And every Monday at one o'clock, I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Munna. And at that program, we bring to you a whole range of new scientific results from the university, ranging from everything from exploring the solar system to looking at the earth from space. Going underwater, talking about earthquakes and volcanoes and other things which have a direct relevance not only to Hawaii, but also to our economy. So please try and join me one o'clock on a Monday afternoon to Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Munna. And see you then. Aloha. My name is Mark Schlob. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me, where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawai'i Ana all across the sea from Hawai'i and back again. Aloha. Welcome back. This is Carol Mon Lee with Education Matters. And we're talking about internships at the Shardler College of Business with my guest Marsha Anderson and Dick Farley. And Marsha started, well actually was handed the program when it was very small in the year 2000 and helped it grow to where it is now with over 450 student placements through Rick Farley's directorship. So we were talking before the break about the business side of it. And I just want to get a little bit more into that. So we have these undergraduate students primarily, although we know that graduate students also go through internships, being able to experience the business community through an internship for a semester. They get credit, they may get pay and of course this opportunity to experience and decide whether this is the field for them. But let's talk about the business side. So how do you identify the businesses? And we talked about the website and are there other ways that students can learn more about the businesses. Well we first of all go out to the business community and we also look at all who the major employers are. We'll communicate with their human resource department, sit down with them, explain what we're looking for and see if they're interested. Many of them by now are participating with us already. Many years. So it's just a matter of updating it on a yearly basis because people change. And so I'm very beneficial. My program is a benefit of having her set a really strong foundation to the program. And then right as I got started, one of our professors had gone out, Shirley Daniels, had gone out and gotten a major grant, a national grant for an entrepreneur internship program, which allowed me then to go out into the community and find startups. And then we were able to provide the startups with interns and the grant program paid the students hourly wages. So the startups didn't have to pay a penny. They got amazing young people at a time when they really needed, desperately needed help to get their program started. So we got a lot of good press as a result of that program at the time and then a lot of companies were contacting our office because they saw that in the news, both on television and print. And so we started, it really blossomed at that point where we saw a lot of companies coming to us. And at the stage we're at right now, we were getting on a daily basis two or three phone calls a day, always companies trying to start new programs and get something going. So I don't have to do a lot of outreach anymore. There is more of them coming to us. Right. I know we also have a couple of images, Rob, we can bring them up. And so what do we have here? It looks like two students, no, a student and an employer talking to... Yeah, we do, we have two career fairs, one in the fall and one in the spring. And we generally have about 75 to 80 companies come and they are there to hire and also to hire interns. And it's a great opportunity for the companies to come in and sit down and meet our students face to face. It's really important for our students to put a face to that person that they're applying to. And we've had situations where, I mean, Boeing is a good example, where we've had a student walk right out of class, walk right up to the Boeing booth, meet them, impress them and get an offer right there on the spot to do an internship in Seattle. And we were at one point probably placing about 10 to 12 students in Seattle every summer at the Boeing plant. And most of those converted into full-time positions once they graduated. These are business students going to... Yes, primarily finance. Finance. I see. And a lot of analyst type opportunities and some in marketing, but mostly in the financial analyst side. So that brings up another interesting talk. So if they're outside of Hawaii, whether it's mainland or international, who pays for their travel and their expenses? Depends. You know, a company like Boeing, they pay the bill. That's a wonderful opportunity for the students. If it's something the student sets up on their own, we've got a student right now doing a marketing position in Manhattan and another doing a finance on Wall Street. They set it up on their own. They applied. They got accepted. The marketing one, she was able to get a grant for it, so she got a travel expense paid for. The gentleman is on his own. So those are semester ones that are taking their undergraduate summer program internship? Yeah, a lot of internships on the mainland are summer only. We have a benefit here that we go year round. Yeah, our companies are available all the time. But it's always by semester, is that right? It's by semester, yeah. We can go, again, as I mentioned earlier, we can go longer if it calls for it, but it's generally a semester at a time. Is there any requirement for journals or reporting? How do you keep track of your students actually showing up and doing the work and having the businesses confirm to you that they're... The students are required to turn in papers to me throughout their internship. And then at the completion of their internship, the employer does a supervisor evaluation. So whoever was assigned as the supervisor will create, complete an evaluation for all of the students' performance. And yeah, we used to initially, because we had the 150 hour requirement, we used to ask them to turn in time sheets. I stopped that quickly because it was way too much trouble. And what I found was, we never had a problem with the student not getting enough hours. Most of the time, the students were coming in halfway through the semester saying, I met my minimum requirement, now what do I do? And I said, just keep going, you know what I mean? Because it's always been stated, it's a minimum. I said, whenever you're trying to learn something, do you put in the minimum or do you put in the maximum? And so most of our students will put in a lot more hours than it's required. So Marsha, when you started ramping up the program, what was the pay, salary scale in terms of, was it hourly or? Probably would have been an hourly and probably not much over minimum wage, as I remember. And some of them weren't paid. So we've gradually, I think, moved more and more to a paid situation, which pleases everybody really. So they get paid, but do they get credit then? Yes. They can get credit. And pay. And pay. There's no requirement that you do an internship, so they're not satisfying that. Correct. And what about international internships? Did you have any when you were starting in the years? I don't think so, no. But one thing I have to say is Rick is really good at tracking alumni. So if a student, say, wants to go to Japan for a summer internship, he has a list he can draw on and tap for that student. So as the alumni have met success all over the world, I think there's more possibilities for international internships, which is useful, especially for students who want to return to their home country, because that internship gives them the start. So where are some of your internships? Well, generally what happens, though, with the international internships, because it is a job. And you have to meet that country's work requirements and legal status. So what we recommend students do is if they're going to do a study abroad, in Copenhagen or London or Spain, wherever our students go, if they secure an internship through that school, then they're able to get the legal paperwork and the legal work permits in that country to work an internship. So the students, we help them, we help them in the preparation aspect of it, but they're on their own when they look for those kind of things internationally. But so many of our students do international study abroad now. For a semester? For a semester. But so they take full advantage of it while they're there. They're not just there to play and have fun. A lot of them will find internships. So they'll be taking some coursework as a student? Yes. They'll be, of course, learning culturally and living among the community there, but also doing an internship. Right. I've got a student right now doing a banking internship in Germany. I have a student who just turned in his final paper. He did a management internship. He worked with a consulting firm, and he was in Mexico City half the time and in Sao Paulo, Brazil for the other half of the time. Had a phenomenal experience. Do many of these evolve into permanent positions? Some do, yeah. Some do. But the reality is that it's an amazing experience that usually the students will grow so much that when they come back, their confidence level is such that when they saw initially, this is their potential, now they see this is their potential. And it's so funny to watch. I had a student who did a study abroad. He's from Maui. His first trip on an airplane had been from Maui to come to University of Hawaii to go to school. And then he got a study abroad in London, and he wasn't sure if he should do it or not. He was a little scared about it. But when he came back, I sat down with him. He had visited every country in Europe. He had gone all the way down to Istanbul, Turkey. And then when I was asking about his career goal, he goes, I think New York. I think I'm ready. And I'm going, this is not the same person I saw when he left. So it's an amazing opportunity that we really encourage. And I think with Shidler and the grants that we can offer our students, they many times get to do these study abroad, and they get a nice grant to cover the cost. That's great. It's very exciting. Well, so currently we have a very interesting job market, right? It's a tight market, right? And so how does that affect the internship? They assume that's good for our students. Right? Yeah, they're low unemployment. So does that mean the businesses, at least among those in our community, are even more interested in looking for interns? I would say desperate. Desperate. We're in a really good situation right now. And so a lot of them, if they complain that they're not getting enough candidates, we can say, well, maybe you should pay more. Or maybe you take a non-paid to a paid. And so it's basic economics. I mean, it's supply and demand. So we're in the demand stage right now where the students know they have a lot more options available to them. And Hawaii's a little bit behind the curve when it comes to salaries. And we're still, even with the tight market, we're still not seeing the growth in salaries like we would expect to see. But for instance, we've got some interns that are getting $20 to $25 an hour as an intern. And that's an accounting side with the big accounting firms. But it shows they're doing their value to the company. And the company, it's valued to them to pay them. Well, we only have a few more seconds left. So before I sign off, I want you to look in the camera for Rick and tell our viewers how they can reach you if they have either interest in being interns or a business that might want to use our interns. Yeah. The best way to reach me is my direct line at the University of Hawaii is 956-6972. I can also be reached through email at rvarly at hawaii.edu. Contact me, tell me what your needs are, whether you're a student or an employer. I'll be happy to sit down with you and we'll figure out the best way to make it work. With a new company, I'll be happy to come down. I'll visit you. I'll look at the job site, see where you anticipate putting your intern. What kind of work do you want to give them? And then I can help identify good candidates for you. So we work very closely with the companies. I know that the dean at the business school is very positive about it. He wants the business school to be involved in the local business, not be the ivory tower type of attitude. So we're ready. We're ready to work with any company or any student that's interested in working with us. Great. And I know Marcia was here this summer to actually work with interns as a mentor and brought you back and that was a wonderful gift for our students. Oh, that was fun. Thank you both, Marcia and Rick. And that brings us to the end of our show today. We have enjoyed bringing it to you. I'm your host, Carol Monli. We've been talking about career kickstart internships at UH Shirela College of Business and how hands-on experience makes a difference in finding the right job. And it's a win for businesses, too. So thank you both, and we'll see you next time. Aloha.