The word “summer” can mean many different things to different people. From internships, global travel, summer classes, and more--PRISM has taken full advantage of all that summer has to offer!
Experiencing a Taste of the "Real World"
Ana Nosal - Consumer Insights Analyst Intern at Lowe's (Charlotte, NC)
In addition to enjoying all of activities Charlotte has to offer, Ana interned with Lowe's in Consumer Insights & Data Analytics as a Consumer Insights Analyst.
Ana said, “I worked on a few different projects including trends, store experience, merchandising research, and consumer sentiment.”
Throughout her internship, Ana was able to network across the company and even meet some Hokie alums in top leadership positions.
Eli Gary - Sales Management Intern at PepsiCo (New York, NY)
As a Sales Management Intern with PepsiCo, Eli said he "was in charge of conducting a project to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and save money for the new direct store delivery method used to distribute drinks.”
At the end of his time with the company, he was able to present his findings and process for completing his project in front of his superiors and some corporate executives.
Helen Zhang - Analyst Intern at the Federal Aviation Administration (Washington, DC)
Throughout her time as an Analyst Intern for the Federal Aviation Administration, Helen was able to teach herself the basics of two new programming languages.
“For the first half of the summer I was teaching myself R (a computer language) and utilizing text mining packages to convert narratives into vectors," said Helen. "For the second half, I've been learning VBA in Excel to create charts for anomaly detection of events in the National Airspace System.”
At the conclusion of her internship, Helen presented her findings of her prototype system to the Air Traffic Safety Oversight Service.
Getting Ahead on Classes
Ricky Lam - Student (Northern Virginia & Virginia Tech)
As a Multimedia Journalism major and Business minor, Ricky said, “I decided to take two courses (Accounting and Media Effects) over the summer because I didn't want to overload myself with 18 credits for my last year at the university.”
In Media Effects, a communications elective that focuses on how media influences the way we live, Ricky was able to get more deep with the course than what the class actually offered because he is keen on learning more about how he can benefit society.
Amanda Robinson - Student (England, Italy, Switzerland, Germany)
Amanda took design classes all over Europe over a four week European Emersion program that Virginia Tech offers. She studied the origin and history of European design throughout classes and field trips in England, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany.
Adventuring Around the Globe
Meredith Hoopes - Traveler (La Crosse, Wisconsin)
Meredith went above and beyond in making La Crosse, Wisconsin her home for the summer by embracing all of the new experiences and new people it offered.
Among her many travels throughout the area around La Crosse, she said the 2017 Summerfest, an annual music festival covering 75 acres in Milwaukee, was definitely the highlight of her summer. Due to her newfound love to this place, she marked this summer as “phenomenal, maybe the best summer of my life.”
Donna Wertalik - Traveler (Jamaica & Disney World)
In between working on the creation of a new course proposal in creative technologies and marketing, Donna was able to get away for some fun-filled vacation time in June.
Donna said, “My husband and I went to an all inclusive in the Caribbean for 10 days to celebrate our 20th Anniversary! Swimming, sunning and recharging!” The following month, she attended a family reunion in Disney World with her parents and her brother’s family where they swam with dolphins, rode roller coasters, and made summer memories.
This summer has definitely been one for the books, but we are so ready to return to Blacksburg very soon!