Ferris State University students gain valuable work experience through internships. Internships also can confirm or redirect career decision-making, provide marketability, develop people skills and enhance classroom learning. Many academic programs require one, but the experience is encouraged regardless to provide students with a better understanding of what will be expected of them in the workplace.
Many students are participating in myriad internships this summer. Meet: Dietrich Lever:
He is: A senior in Business Administration with a concentration in Human Resources
from Canton Mich.
Internship: Blue Cross Blue Shield in Southfield Mich.
What he is learning: He analyzes and compared provider manuals from Blue Cross Blue Shield to all other Michigan insurance providers, seeing how they’re set up, how they looked, the setup of these manuals. He makes sure what was the most consistent and surveyed the public to see how they felt about these manuals. This kept him very focused and made sure that he enjoyed his internship.
How Ferris Helped: He credits his ISYS classes to helping him with Microsoft and PowerPoint and Excel, he became more proficient in using. His public speaking classes have been extremely helpful with how to communicate to people. This has been most apparent in his job day to day, although everything that he has learned here at Ferris has been extremely helpful. He explains that Ferris’ core values have helped him in his internship. Most importantly, understanding the core value opportunity has helped him get that experience he needed to build himself and his resume.
What he is involved in: Lever is a student-athlete and played men’s basketball for Ferris State University as a point guard.
His future plans: He is hopeful that he can stay within Blue Cross Blue Shield, but has a backup plan to look for other jobs once he has finalized his degree in August 2015.