Internships Turn Into First Professional Jobs

“The summer before my senior year, I had an internship at Mayo on the orthopedic trauma floor. I was offered a job after graduation and worked there as an orthopedic trauma nurse,” Kelsey says. “Now I work as a nurse on the cardiovascular surgery/cardiovascular transplant progressive care unit.”

Jake also had an internship that led to his first professional job. “The summer before my senior year, I had an internship with Hormel Foods in Austin, Minnesota, as a software engineering intern. After the internship, I was offered a job with them that started after I graduated,” Jake says. “I worked there for a little over a year before I took a job with Olmsted Medical Center (OMC) in Rochester, Minnesota as an information privacy specialist working with the health information management and IT departments. A year or so later, I was promoted to the health information management systems and operations manager at OMC. I was in that position for about six months before I joined Mayo Clinic as an IT systems engineer in November 2012. Most recently, I was promoted to a senior IT systems analyst at Mayo Clinic, also.”

Senior Paper/Project

“The title of my senior paper was ‘Safety and Ergonomics: What Has Not Been Proven Effective and Implications for the Future,’” says Kelsey. “I researched back-injury cases and what has been done since to prevent them. I also looked at what worked, what didn’t, and made recommendations for the future. It was interesting to learn from what I researched and then experience back injuries firsthand with my co-workers.”

Jake says, “I completed a senior project instead of a paper. I assisted with the implementation of Reason, Luther’s web content management system. It gave me experience working with people from all levels of an organization. I worked with Luther systems administrators, web content staff, professors, and students.”

Off-Campus Studies Provide Perspective

“I think my study-abroad experience helped me become a better nurse,” says Kelsey. “I went to Norway and Russia, where we looked at cultural ties and World War II. I think that experience translates well to nursing since I work with people from so many different backgrounds.”

Jake says, “I studied off-campus by taking a J-Term trip to Silicon Valley. We went to California and visited companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Tesla, Pixar, and a whole bunch of other start-ups. It was very eye-opening to experience the culture of these companies.”