Internship program links education and industry

Jacquelyn Curtis

DEWR's Stephen Moore with intern Jayne O’Leary Photo: Kimberly Douglas

17 October 2006: A breakfast held to celebrate an innovative internship program demonstrated the close relationship with business a relatively new computing degree is already renowned for.

The Bachelor of Business Informatics (BBI) course is designed to align IT and business by producing graduates who have an understanding of how organisations function and how to design and implement IT systems.

The internship program, which has contributed to a 100 per cent success rate of employment for BBI graduates, sees final year students undertake 240 hours of ‘real world’ experience.

Current interns and BBI students who will participate in the program next year networked at the breakfast with industry partners including the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) and the Australian Tax Office.

Course Convener and Deputy Head of Information Sciences and Engineering Penny Collings said the internships had been well received by both students and employers.

“The students love it,” she said. “They act as the interface between business and the programmers.”

“It is very gratifying for the students to get to undertake work that matches their training.”

Stephen Moore, from DEWR, said their organisation decided to get involved after noticing the high quality of BBI students graduating from the University.

“We noticed that the UC graduates were excellent and decided we needed to get more involved in order to attract them to us,” he said.

“The course is ideal because rather than just focusing on technical aspects of IT the students train as analysts.

“We thought ‘this is what we really need.’”

Jayne O’Leary, who is undertaking her internship with DEWR, said the experience of “getting to work with different people” and having a role in production support had been a great opportunity to put her knowledge into practice.

Fellow student, Katarina Franjic said her internship with software consultancy firm Deloitte had been a “really good experience and opportunity to interact with people in the industry”.

Through the internship, Ms Franjic has secured full time work with Deloitte after she graduates.

“It’s been great, because now my career path is pretty much set,” she said.

Lex Stewart described the internship experience at the ACT Government’s InTACT as providing him with the industry experience “you can’t learn from textbooks”.