Staci Dumoski
When an interterm course sparked a new interest for Chapman student Carolina Caraballo Vélez ’26, it led her to a change in major. Now, she’s supplementing her classroom education with valuable internship experiences, which are helping her hone her skills and learn more about opportunities in her chosen field.
Like many students in their first year of college, Vélez wasn’t sure what she wanted to major in. Over interterm, she decided to take a course in Python, a computer programming language. Despite having no previous experience in computer science, she clicked with the subject matter.
“I really enjoyed it,” she says. “It came easy to me, and it was something that I enjoyed spending several hours learning about.”
A few additional programming courses convinced her that Chapman’s Fowler School of Engineering was a good fit, and she declared computer science as her major. Her exact career goals were still up in the air, though.
“I only started to delve into technology when I first came to Chapman, so I’ve been learning about the industry and all of these technological concepts for two years now,” she says.
Then she noticed a post on the engineering school’s “opportunities” Slack channel. Samuel Lee, Fowler Engineering’s career advisor, was looking for two or three first- or second-year students to apply for a pre-internship at Ingram Micro, the start of a pipeline program that prepares students for regular internships in their junior and senior years, and then for the company’s new graduate program.
The application process was straightforward, and because Vélez had already made use of Chapman’s Career Team to improve her resume, she was confident that she was putting her best foot forward when she submitted her resume to Lee. After interviewing with the company’s talent acquisition manager, she was offered a spot in the summer program.
Vélez’s internship program took place over seven weeks, during which she and two other Chapman students spent five to eight hours a week getting to know professionals in different departments within the company. They also met with new grads to talk about their experiences with the company and with the company CEO.
“We had the opportunity to talk to departments such as the infrastructure, database, data analytics, UI/UX…” she said. “We also had the opportunity to talk to project managers and technical project managers and learn about the steps of developing a project from start to finish.”
Vélez says she generally knew what various departments did, but the exposure helped her get a better understanding of how each role fits into the company.
“It helped me see where I would be interested in working,” she says. “For example, we had the opportunity to talk to folks who were working in database management. I never really knew what went into it and what the role looked like, but after learning about it, I realized that I actually really enjoyed the topic, and now I’m taking database classes.”
In addition, they worked as a team on a special project to create features for the company’s new X-Advantage platform.
“We had the opportunity to ask questions about what they liked about it, what they didn’t like about it and what they’d like to see within the platform,” Vélez says. “At the end of our pre-internship, we gave a presentation about some features that we came up with—like a buy now option that will allow the user to check out immediately rather than take them back to the original website.”
The presentation received a positive response, especially from the web development department, who expressed an interest in incorporating some of the ideas the interns had generated into the X-Advantage platform.
“The opportunity to work with the team and actually create something that might be implemented in the future was something that I was really excited and proud about,” she says.
As a first-generation student, Vélez also appreciates the exposure to the corporate world in general.
“They gave us a tour of the whole building and to me it was just really amazing because I’ve never been in such an office,” she says. “My mother didn’t have the opportunity to go to college, and I never had the opportunity to be within these environments until being there. It was such an amazing opportunity.”
Velez continues to explore the wealth of opportunities in the technology field, though she is still open to possibilities about what direction her career will take.
“I want to go into web development because I really enjoy the aspect of making things look pretty and making them accessible for users,” she says, “but I’m also right now delving into machine learning and AI.”
This summer, she took a machine learning course, which was followed by a fellowship with American Express, where she is helping to build a model that will redact sensitive user data for their generative AI use cases.
Vélez recommends the internship experience for other students.
“I learned so much in such a short period of time,” she says. “The internship allowed me to look at the bigger picture and really understand the different aspects that go into a company such as Ingram Micro.”
Nationally, more students are securing internships to gain experience before they launch their post-graduation careers. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), more than two-thirds of the Class of 2024 engaged in an internship experience during college. To learn more about internships and how students can earn academic credit, please visit Internships at Chapman. To explore experiential education opportunities and gain practical industry experience before you graduate, make an appointment with a school/college career advisor or the central Career and Professional Development career advisor.
