Senior Amanda Stephens(left) and Jackie Graf(right) talk to their friend
Lily Farnsworth(center) about the Student Technology Support
workshops that she created.
SAM CARAVANA / THE DEPAUW
Amidst the gloomy day brought on by the drizzling rain, Julian Atrium this past Wednesday provided one of the brighter spots on DePauw University’s campus, which came in the form of the ITAP Senior Showcase.
The event, which was started by students three years ago, allows ITAP seniors to present their personal or group projects, some of which they started working on when they were first-years.
“[The students] were interested because they do all these…projects…but they never really get a chance to gather in one main area, one group,” said Assistant Director of ITAP Brandy Richmond. “It [is] a really exciting event, and also gives the people on campus an idea of what each student does in an internship and how different some of these projects are.”
Originally from India, senior Rudra Vishweshwar focused his project on both DePauw’s international website and international admissions website, where he had helped provide updates and improve the websites’ images as a whole.
“It was really outdated. It had information on there that was decades old,” said Vishweshwar, who is double majoring in computer science and economics. “We…wanted to first make sure that any information on there was actually a working link and was relevant and accurate in its description.”
Senior Marj Daily explains how she used her video production skills
to create videos for the office of Alumni Engagement.
SAM CARAVANA / THE DEPAUW
Senior Marjorie Daily took a different route and based her project off of her work at the alumni engagement office.
“We primarily make media for them,” said Daily, who did her project with senior Ngoc Dao. “The different types of videos we make are thank-you videos, invitation videos and then…how-to videos, like how to work the EverTrue App, which is an app sponsored by the alumni engagement office to engage alumni and students.”
Much of the success of the senior showcase and ITAP itself has to do with diversity. Just ask ITAP Director Doug Fellegy.
“One of the things that’s made it most rewarding to be the director of a program like this is to see the variety of students that we have…and also the variety of projects they’re able to work on,” said Fellegy. “It’s not something [where]…we only accept one type of student and they’re only able to do one type of work. It’s that students are able to share a lot of what they’re passionate about and we get to really see just how creative...students across DePauw’s campus can be.”
For those unfamiliar the program as a whole, ITAP (The Information Technology Associates Program) gives students on-campus internship opportunities to develop their technological skills to prepare for the professional world.
But the skills that come with ITAP aren’t just technologically focused.
Members of the DePauw community walk around as ITAP seniors present
some the work they have completed during their internships.
SAM CARAVANA / THE DEPAUW
“It’s more than just about the hands-on-skills that you learn and how that works together,” said Richmond. “They kind of see the big picture in the role they play in contributing to the whole DePauw community overall.
Senior Lily Farnsworth agreed.
“I came in as a freshman very afraid of talking in front of others [and] not having that strong of communication skills,” said Farnsworth, who currently serves as the Student Director of the Student Technology Support Center. “Through this internship and through being the director… and giving workshops, I’ve been able to really strengthen those skills and be able to not be so afraid speaking in front of large crowds.”
So what’s next?
“From here, the ITAP seniors go to a whole number of different places,” said Fellegy. “I’ve spoken to a few who have already lined up plans for grad school. There are some that are also… going to pursue different types of internships in a given field. We also have a lot of students that have… been accepted for… different jobs across a number of different fields.”
No matter where they end up working, ITAP seniors know the program has prepared them well, to say the least.
“I think most ITAP students have a competitive edge against a lot of the people that we’re competing against because we really do have these diverse skills on top of our liberal arts education,” said Daily.
For more information on ITAP, visit DePauw’s website.