Originally published October 24, 2014
By Lisa Y. Garibay
UTEP News Service
There and Back Again: With a gentle nod to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, this is the fourth article in an occasional series covering the off-campus experiences of UTEP students with study abroad, internships and externships, because what students learn outside the classroom is as important as what they learn inside the classroom.
After a series of seven different interview stages comprising work on case studies, technical prowess and behavior, Oscar Casanova found himself ahead of candidates from Harvard, Brown and Yale when he was chosen for a highly selective, paid internship with global financial giant J.P. Morgan.
College of Business Administration student Monica Rodriguez was a Chief Financial Officer intern this in summer 2014 at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) headquarters in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of Monica Rodriguez.
The senior finance major within UTEP’s College of Business Administration (COBA) was whisked away for a summer in New York City to boost his professional potential through hands-on work in the financial service’s Investment Management Division.
“After I accepted the position, I felt blessed and realized that I’d accomplished one of my biggest goals as a UTEP college student,” Casanova said.
However intense, getting accepted was perhaps the easy part. Casanova’s days during the internship were jam-packed. He would arrive at the office at 6 a.m. in order to catch up on emails while eating breakfast. He listened in on a daily global markets morning call, followed by reading through The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times to prepare for the financial markets before working with a portfolio manager to create quantitative financial models and other projects.
The afternoons were dedicated to meetings with clients and firm peers to review asset strategy and investments. Before hitting the sack hours later, he sent managers thorough project updates via email and made a to-do list for the next day when the cycle started over again. But Casanova would not have traded the experience for anything.
“I was able to develop a very technical skill set that I’ve wouldn’t be able to acquire elsewhere,” he said, giving credit to the Sponsors for Educational Opportunity career program where he received focused coaching along with his mentor at J.P. Morgan. “I have the opportunity to start my career working on Wall Street straight after graduating from UTEP thanks to the networking I was able to do with professionals in the financial services industry in different investment banks in New York City.”
Opportunities like Casanova’s mean COBA graduates are even more capable of going out into the world to change it for the better when it comes to finance, marketing, accounting and more.
Humberto Durón, an accounting major who spent the summer at the multinational investment banking firm Goldman Sachs knows his education at UTEP helped immensely during his internship and had him on par with peers from Ivy League schools.
“Courses I took in business writing, global business and business finance all played a key role during my internship, as did classes that expanded my technical abilities such as becoming proficient with Microsoft Excel,” Durón said. “I knew more and was able to do a lot more than my colleagues at work thanks to the well-rounded education UTEP has provided me.”
Information Systems major Erik Oaxaca also ended up on the East Coast after searching for the best opportunity he could find. His persistence rewarded him with a paid internship as a project manager/IT specialist at IBM in New York City. Oaxaca was picked from a pool of candidates to fill the only slot open for this kind of work in the nation. He was ecstatic upon receiving news of his selection.
“I made immediate changes to my lifestyle as I knew this was the head start of my career,” he said.
Oaxaca dove into communicating throughout each day of his internship with the managers who mentored him to get the right information for the data analysis work entrusted to him.
“I was in charge of a resource skill assessment project in which I had to find the deficiencies and strengths of the delivery centers in Boulder, Colorado, and Fishkill, New York, by assessing and communicating with employees and 36 first line managers,” Oaxaca explained. “In the end, I had to create a gap analysis and present it to a round of executives for recommendations in order to optimize the efficiency of the Delivery Centers.”
Oaxaca did such a good job he was rewarded with a full-time job offer from IBM. Durón received and accepted an offer of employment too. Upon graduating from UTEP this December, he will return to New York City to work as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs.
According to COBA Dean Robert Nachtmann, D.B.A., the college works to provide its students with three foundations to support their futures: strong academic programs of study, extensive professional skill building and relevant experiential training efforts.
“Critical to our experiential strategy is the tactic of internships, which provides the student with the opportunity to put academic knowledge into practice within the context of an ongoing enterprise,” Nachtmann said. “All of our constituents win.”
This strategy of education tied to practical experience helped Monica Rodriguez to a paid Chief Financial Officer internship at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
The senior accounting major was one of just 264 students selected out of 3,000 applicants to the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities’ (HACU) internship program. She was then placed at the Department of Agriculture’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., for a summer of intense learning through action. Like fellow Miner Casanova, Rodriguez was truly grateful for it.
“I never thought that I would have the opportunity to work for the government, and being selected for this position was just amazing,” she said.
During her days in D.C., Rodriguez set up budget and farm bill reports for U.S. states, made reconciliations to accounts and attended audit and training meetings with the department’s CFO. She mentored directly under Justin Gonzalez, an accountant at the NRCS, and Brenda Rodriguez, director of the service’s Training, Policy and Systems Division.
Within the internship, Rodriguez was entrusted with a wide range of responsibilities. She applied her knowledge from UTEP of accounting regulations and record keeping while learning more about how things worked at the top level through constant interaction with the team within NRCS as well as other federal agencies, contractors, public advocacy groups and members of the general public.
Through it all, Rodriguez feels confident that the coupling of her undergraduate education with such a significant internship means a bright future.
“I look forward to full-time employment within the government and plan to achieve that as well as a Master of Accountancy degree. With the networking I have made and the experience in the field, I have the opportunity achieve my goals,” she said.
In fall 2013, spring 2014 and summer 2014, 160 COBA students participated in internships.
COBA students have several avenues through which to discover the right internship match for their level of experience, professional aspirations, educational requirements and desired location. Nick Zweig, coordinator of the University Career Center’s Internship Program, helps to track non-credit internships, which are just one way for these future business leaders to go about garnering real-world experience.
Information on major-related internships and full-time job opportunities can be found in each of the College of Business Administration’s four departments and its business student organizations. The Job Mine online database and University career fairs provide connections for any UTEP student’s area of study. The Undergraduate Advising Office maintains a Facebook page highlighting professional development opportunities as well.
“Suffice it to say, there are many opportunities, particularly if students are willing to look outside the local area,” Zweig said.
Editor’s note: If you have a story or an experience you think would fit this series, please email news@utep.edu with the subject line: There and Back Again.