Morgan Woods made the most of her summer to channel professional development. Woods, a Slippery Rock University senior computing major from Pittsburgh (Baldwin HS), spent the summer as a data management intern at the First National Bank Corporation headquarters in Downtown Pittsburgh.
In the corporate office, interns preview the realities of post-grad life in the tech industry environment. For Woods, this meant arriving on site before her coworkers.
“I’m not a morning person, but I liked to be there early,” Woods said.
FNB gave seasonal interns the responsibility of handling real member data. Woods’ first task of the day was routinely merging duplicate records using a series of complex coding instructions, populated into grids.
The process pinpointed errors that may have surfaced overnight, leaving the data manager to repair any discontinuities that could hinder company procedures further down the line.
Woods’ concentration in information technology led her to a data visualization class at SRU which she took during the summer term. The class equipped her with the skills needed to generate the grids of account records performed at FNB. Completing a voluntary internship in tandem with the required course was a chance to immediately apply skills.
Additionally, the nature of FNB’s fast-paced culture quickly led Woods to form connections with her coworkers and fellow interns. The input and advice of FNB staff bolstered her confidence in her ability to do her job well.
“I called them my ‘work besties,’” Woods said. “They made every day easier.”
Woods also made connections with another intern, and together contributing to a project that required the interns to find solutions for efficiency drawbacks in data reporting and monitoring software. The project culminated in a two-hour-long group presentation, given before FNB’s IT directors and chief information officer.
Woods said that while the presentation was a daunting task, it was rewarding to receive detailed feedback from high-level executives.
FNB’s summer internship program highlighted the classroom learning Woods was familiar with and contextualized it among the experience of a workplace in the tech industry. Woods saw firsthand what it was like to implement the insight she gained from her favorite professors and courses.
“I loved my database systems class—this is something I want to do in my future,” Woods said. “I had no clue it was an actual thing I could do,” but once I came into this internship, I realized I literally can do this every day of my life.”
More information about computer science at SRU is available on the program’s webpage.