Internship Stories

William Hinkle Office of Global Education
For my internship I worked with the Office of Global Education at Auburn University. I was initially hired on to work towards redesigning the website, but that job was sidelined in favor of assisting the new temporary marketing team that was put together for this semester. During my time at the Office of Global Education I got to work with a fantastic team of highly skilled individuals. I have worked on teams in the past, but never on this type of work and never with people who were as dedicated and capable as this one has been. It felt like everyone was ready to bring new ideas each week and that everyone was able to contribute meaningfully towards bringing the end goal to life throughout the semester. I view this internship as a solid role I can point to in order to highlight my abilities for future opportunities and as a fantastic experience that grew my professional potential.

For the main project, I had a series of evolving tasks that eventually led to the creation of a brand identity kit for the office to use in future advertising and public messaging. The main project consisted of selecting a color palette for the office’s marketing, creating an office logo/identifier, creating a few pieces of physical marketing material, creating digital landing pages for marketing and public messaging, helping with social media, and creating mockup designs for future products incorporating the new brand identity. I also completed a few other odd jobs outside of the main project, like: Designing a DEI page for the College of Human Sciences, helping Roger Thurow with recording voice and video for a hunger lecture series aimed at high schools, and creating usage guides for a few of the digital tools I used for the office. The best part about this internship, in terms of the work itself, was the range of jobs that I was given to accomplish and the freedom that I was given to approach accomplishing them. Especially since most of the tasks allowed me to use my digital skillset, which is something that I have rarely done in a professional setting.

This job really felt like I was actively using my education and my personal skills in tandem for the first time in a real work environment. Every week it felt like we were approaching the marketing questions like the problems of a PBL, then working through which aspects to tackle and what aspects needed more information, or perspectives, to be complete. I also felt this was the first job where I was able to dive into the work in my own way, rather than following a set process. I really enjoy the process of learning and discovery and I was doing a lot of both throughout the semester so that I could bring my best work forward for my project. Getting to use my digital skillset also highlighted where I am the weakest when it comes to those skills too, which isn’t something I could do before this experience. Overall, I feel this internship directly increased my skills, my ability to work in a team, and it changed my perspective when it comes to what jobs I want to look for in the future.