Since its inception in January 1992, the Information Systems Internship program has served more than 170 students and 60 organizations. The Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at the Michael G. Foster School of Business established this program in order to provide practical learning experience in professional settings to undergraduate and MBA students concentrating in Information Systems. Each student intern is required to work for the sponsoring organization from 8 to 40+ hours per week. While most have been for a single academic quarter (slightly less than 3 months), an increasing number are for 6-, 9- or 12-month terms. The student may receive academic credit under this program and may also receive compensation from the sponsoring organization. Typically, the student is also enrolled in other course work, but there are always exceptions.

The experience and exposure gained by each student will vary based on the type of business, size of the Information Systems function and specific needs of the internship. Past interns participated in many areas of information systems, including: systems planning, analysis, design, implementation, programming, testing; data administration; selection of hardware and software; network selection, installation and administration; developing systems documentation, technical documentation and training material; training users and operators; customer, user and product support; maintenance, modifications and enhancements of existing systems; hardware and software installation; and auditing computer systems and operations.

Interns have also learned and used new hardware platforms, operating systems, languages, database management systems and development tools. They have conducted library research regarding corporate computing profiles, written business reports, attended business meetings, training sessions, trade shows, and other IS events. Several have provided customer consulting, and supported the management and marketing of software products, information technology and services.

Following are short descriptions of several past internships:

Application Systems Development: The intern worked on an ongoing systems development project within a large Information Systems group. The student performed specific programming and testing tasks within the overall scope of the project and worked with other members of the team, under supervision of its manager.

Systems Support: The intern acted as a full-time member of the Information Systems Support Group, configuring, installing and testing hardware, systems, telecommunications and application software. Troubleshooting user and network problems, often without assistance, was a large part of the job.

Customer Support: The intern worked for a large software vendor as a member of its customer support team. During this internship, the student became an expert in specific software products and provided this expertise to customers.

Information Technology Marketing: The intern performed tasks related to marketing information technology under the supervision of local personnel of a major technology vendor. The student also attended planning meetings, client presentations, company sponsored events and internal training.

Corporate Information Systems: The intern conducted a systems analysis study related to the needs and requirements for the corporate Help Desk function. The student's duties included conducting user interviews, researching available software and presenting recommendations to management.

Microcomputer Applications Development: The intern worked with users in the local office of a professional service firm to determine system requirements. The student designed and implemented applications and database systems using microcomputer-based database and spreadsheet packages. The intern also performed software and hardware selection, installation and training for a local area network.

The Information Systems Internship program manager, Subodha Kumar, works with sponsoring organizations to determine requirements, define the scope of and requirements for each internship, and ensure that it will provide educational value to the student. Students submit their resumes. Depending on the requirements for each internship, these are forwarded to the appropriate companies. Each company schedules and conducts interviews at its facilities and selects the student intern. Scheduling and compensation discussions occur between the sponsoring organization and the student directly.

For further information about the Information Systems Internship program, contact subodha@u.washington.edu