To Yuri Blaise, experience is everything.
When it comes to pursuing his dream of working in data analytics, the Innovation Academy student recognizes that hands-on work is necessary. So when a summer internship opportunity with Proctor & Gamble came around, Blaise, a UF industrial systems junior, couldn’t say no.
Innovation Academy has grown to include local internship options and worked to accommodate student schedules, but some of its students, like Blaise, are finding difficulty fitting outside internships and pre-professional courses into the Spring-Summer schedule.
Ultimately, accepting the internship came with a price for Blaise: His graduation date is now in 2017 — a year later than it was originally. The 21-year-old said this has been his biggest issue with the academy.
“To build your professional career, you have to sacrifice your graduation, which I don’t think is fair,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good, career-wise, for students.”
Blaise said it’s discouraging when he’s told to pursue Fall internships when most internship programs cater to the traditional Summer Break. In fact, last week, he had to turn down an internship with Tallahassee-based management consulting firm Accenture because the internship was only for summer.
“Companies will be so interested in you, and the second you say ‘fall,’ it’s like they found out you had an STD or something,” he said. “It gets frustrating to constantly turn down opportunities because you’re on a very rigid scheduling structure in a program that claims it’s for students.”
However, IA does have infrastructure to help students get internships at the local level and elements some students feel made them more competitive in the applicant pool.
UF marketing junior David Nassau earned an internship through the Innovation Academy Local Internship Experience. During the program, IA students work on projects with Gainesville companies for class credit during the Fall semester.
Nassau, 20, applied to the optional program for Fall 2013 and was matched with the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention. With four internship credits and an online business class, he was living on campus as an enrolled student.
“It’s just like (traditional) summer at that point,” he said.
For Hammaad Saber, IA’s innovation minor was the conversation point he needed to make a connection with a representative from Disney.
As an industrial and systems engineering freshman, he walked into UF’s Career Showcase and mentioned the minor. Intrigued, the representative encouraged him to apply for the Disney College Program.
Now a junior, Saber has not only participated in that program, but also took a data-based professional internship at the theme park. He hopes to return in the upcoming Fall and eventually work for Disney.
“When I think about it, it really started with that one conversation I had with him (the recruiter) because of Innovation Academy,” Saber, 21, said.
IA Director Jeff Citty said he feels the minor will serve as the foot in the door students need to make themselves stand out in interviews and on applications.
“The local community, the business community, the parents, the employers we talk to — when they learn about the skills we’re teaching students for the Innovation minor, they get very excited and want to start to procure our students upon graduation,” Citty said.
Citty pointed to two local start-ups — Fracture, a company that prints photos on glass, and Grooveshark, a music-streaming service — as businesses who have expressed interest in IA students.
Herb Jones, Fracture’s chief marketing officer, said he thinks the program allows students to be well-equipped for entrepreneurship. Fracture took on a few IA interns in the customer experience department for a pilot internship program more than a year ago that is no longer available.
He said he didn’t know if the innovation minor would be an application asset because the company prioritizes writing and marketing skills.
While Fracture offers only summer internships for now, Jones said the company is willing to work with students’ academic schedules — even those of IA students.
“School is first,” he said. “But my goal is to get Gators hired.”
Todd Chase, the chief people officer at Grooveshark, said he felt IA was producing a high caliber of students, some of whom have interned at the company.
“There’s no question that a student who experiences the kind of curriculum developed in the Innovation Academy will be better prepared to work in an entrepreneurial company, younger companies, even a traditional company,” he said.
Chase said over the last decade, he’s seen more students apply for fall internships. While the pool of Grooveshark summer internship applicants is still larger, the number of available positions is proportionate, so it doesn’t make much of a difference.
“I don’t think one is fundamentally better than the other,” Chase said. “It depends ultimately on the individual and the company they’re at.”
As far as graduate and professional school applications go, it remains to be seen if the program has an impact. Most students in the 3-year-old academy have not made it to that point yet.
While Stela Patidar, 20, has enjoyed the leadership opportunities in IA, she’s worried about making time to take the MCAT and apply to medical school with the Spring-Summer schedule. The psychology sophomore wanted to take organic chemistry in the Fall, but because it’s not offered online, she might have to wait until Spring because IA students can only take online classes in the Fall.
“I don’t want to wait,” she said. “I want to get it out of the way.”
Although she’s exploring the option of taking classes at Santa Fe College, she’s concerned she’ll miss out on what she feels would be a more challenging, yet rewarding, class at UF.
Joseph Spillane, the associate dean for student affairs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and director of its Academic Advising Center — which handles pre-health and pre-law students — said the 32 IA majors are set up so students on the Spring-Summer schedule can take all the courses they need and still graduate on time. Spillane said the college has tried to ensure that all required pre-professional curriculum would be available to students during Spring and Summer.
“The good news is that when students have had real issues where they needed to take a Fall course,” he said, “we’ve been able to make some exceptions and allow students on occasion to take residential classes in the Fall to stay on track.”
Otherwise, he said, IA students should be able to graduate and apply to professional schools on time.
Spillane acknowledged it can be a challenging path to take on the pre-professional track as an IA student. But he thinks it can also be a rewarding path because the program’s focus on innovation will make students more competitive applicants.
“I think what you’re going to get is applicants to professional schools that are going to be competitive and successful,” he said, “because they’re going to be able to distinguish themselves and their undergraduate experiences from a lot of other applicants.”
[A version of this story ran on page 1 - 4 on 4/15/2015]
Stela Patidar, a 20-year-old UF psychology sophomore enrolled in the Innovation Academy, poses for a photo in Turlington Hall against a projection of her Canvas dashboard. A student on the pre-med track, Patidar is concerned about keeping up with her classes and studying for the MCAT while on the Spring-Summer calendar.
