Case study: UTS Internship

At the UTS Partnerships Unit, we practise what we preach and have great faith in our high quality, industry-ready students, so we hired a UTS journalism student on a ten-week internship to develop new communications and marketing material for our unit. At UTS, students are our core business, and like our industry partners we want to access talent at an early stage in their degree.

Internships are critical to how we prepare students for competitive and rapidly evolving industries. Lifelong learning is at the forefront of the message that we instil within our students – they put theory into practice in an internship and develop the skills employers continually tell us are vital such as communication, critical thinking teamwork and digital literacy.

At the UTS Partnerships Unit, we employed Adriana Zanchetta as our communications intern. Adriana studied a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) and Bachelor of Arts in International Studies (Italian major) at UTS. She has written a reflection on her intern experience.

“I chose to partake in an internship with UTS Partnerships Unit to gain additional real-world experience, specifically within the corporate world. The fact that the Partnerships Unit works with so many industry partners on collaborative projects across the university has given me really broad exposure that I might not otherwise have received – especially with such a transdisciplinary focus.

Throughout my degree I have undertaken internships in journalism and marketing, however I have never worked for a company that specialises in industry relationships. When I saw the advertisement for this internship on Career Hub, I thought ‘why not give it a shot?’ At the time, I was already interning as a Communications Assistant at UTS: International, and felt the skills I had gained in this position would transfer seamlessly into the internship position at Partnerships Unit – this included strong interview and people skills, the ability to produce high-quality written case studies, and to work both autonomously and in a team.

The Partnerships Unit is essentially in a scale-up phase at UTS, and therefore I have received the added bonus of experiencing working with a team from scratch and the challenge of creating communications material without any tangible examples to go by. This means a lot of trial and error, building confidence in myself to ‘have a go’ and create something new to navigate the unknown. I feel like I am part of the team, rather than just an intern. In addition to this being a paid role (added bonus!), I attend team meetings and workshops and my suggestions and ideas are valued.

I draw from my knowledge gained during my studies in Communications and Journalism to transform the work of the team into tangible material that is useful for real-world clients. My role is to create case-studies on UTS employees with strong industry ties. I interview these academics, write-up 'stories', fact-sheets and PowerPoint presentations for use both internally and with potential and current industry partners.

I have participated in six internships throughout my five years’ study of two bachelor degrees. As an intern I enjoy seeing my work have a tangible outcome for the success of a company. I prefer to engage with the real-world and produce work which has impact, at the same time as submitting assignments for grading at University.

I can now say that I have at least three years industry experience before even graduating from my undergraduate degree. When I graduate, I hope that my internship experiences can give me that head-start to jump into a desirable position in the company of my choice.”

If you are thinking about hiring an intern either contact us or UTS Careers to discuss.