Since the on-campus internship (OCI) program formed in 2007, more than 15,000 students have been able to gain class credit—and real-world business experience—through the BYU Marriott School of Business. As the program coordinator, David Hollan has a front row seat to students’ growth as they complete OCIs and build their résumés.
Students in any major across campus can apply to participate in OCIs that are integrated into their semester course load. Once accepted, students are put into teams and spend a minimum of nine hours each week interning for businesses while still attending their regular classes on BYU campus.
Students in an OCI are guided by Hollan, who uses his own work experiences to help students with their internships. Hollan graduated from BYU with a bachelor’s degree in microbiology. After working various management roles, including 12 years at Microsoft, he returned to BYU as the OCI program coordinator.
“I do the hard work of finding the internships, so students can enjoy them,” Hollan says. After companies pitch their projects to Hollan and receive his approval, Hollan encourages students to apply for multiple internship projects to find one that suits their needs and will help them develop target skills. “I never put a student on a project they’re not interested in,” Hollan says.
Hollan says sometimes students tackle projects unlike anything they have done before, but they don’t have to work alone. Over the semester, teams of three to five students work on a variety of projects, in which Hollan says they learn more about the companies and themselves. “Students walk out of OCIs with stronger résumés and experience—and a better idea of what they want to do,” Hollan says.
He explains that if a student ends the semester promising to never go near a particular type of project again, he feels just as rewarded as he would if the student had discovered a new passion: “Figuring that out in an OCI is much better than working hard to get accepted into a program, getting a job, and then realizing they don’t like what they do,” Hollan says.
And students aren’t the only ones who gain something from the experience; the companies who sign up can benefit from the work of the interns in a variety of ways. Hollan says some companies appreciate opportunities to receive help from interns, others are run by BYU alumni who want to help students at their alma mater, and still others look to recruit students for full-time positions after graduating.
“I love getting feedback from a company saying this is the best group of people they’ve ever worked with,” Hollan says. “To have companies not affiliated with BYU come back and say, ‘This is a fantastic group of students,’ shows the students really represented BYU well.”