Presbyterian College Career and Professional Development

Closing out National Intern Day with an echo of Dr. Smith's words from my earlier post: "The classroom provides the foundation of knowledge, vocabulary, and analytical thinking. Internships bring that foundation to life. When the two work together, students graduate not only knowing concepts but also understanding how to apply them with professionalism, resilience, and confidence." —Dr. Suzie Smith

Thank you to all our hard-working interns, not to mention their faculty intern advisors and workplace supervisors - too many to list in a single post. We close our celebration with a collage of photos from a portion of PC's summer 2026 interns and invite others to share their photos in the comments.

Let's hear from Jackson Wilbanks to close out the day.

I am happy to share my experience interning at the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services' Finance and Operations Office. I have gathered tons of experience with governmental accounting including budgets, budget process, and procurement. I have applied my skills from the classroom into my daily work activities. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow in my professional career, as well as building meaningful connections along the way.

Healthcare and helping internships can take a variety of appearances and forms. Whether it's using psychology coursework to understand the people side of HR in a healthcare facility, supporting OT/PT or other therapy modes, PA/medical shadowing, or learning about animal health, life sciences and helping professions are central to many student outcomes at Presbyterian College.

From Maggie Roades: "I've learned more than I ever anticipated working here. It's taught me so much about respecting and valuing people with challenges different from my own. I've also learned what it's like to be a part of a team, using that shared accountability and support. Finally, I've grown so much from supervisor feedback, where optimizing client success and wellbeing is always the goal."

Sometimes, students have the opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime experience for their internship. Jeremiah Stichnoth is in exactly such a situation. Presbyterian College marketing will be doing a separate news story about his experience later this summer, but for now, here are a couple of photos from his internship with Douglas Fossils operating out of Casper, Wyoming. A special shoutout to Michael O. Rischbieter, whose networking support helped Jeremiah to secure this internship. Jeremiah shared about these photos - they are "some Dr. R. took at the annual Tate Geological Museum conference. The tooth I’m holding is one I dug up that belonged to some type of Dromaeosaur. ...Also some photos from when I went fossil prospecting in the White River formation with Dr. Sundell."

From Chale McCalpin, interning at Michelin:
My time at Michelin has been an incredibly eye-opening and rewarding journey.

Working alongside people from such diverse cultural and professional backgrounds broadened my perspective daily. On the technical side, having the opportunity to develop key apps and software allowed me to grow exponentially as a developer. But beyond the code, the experience taught me essential life and career skills: mastering time management, leading effective meeting delegations, and navigating professional development with intent.

Seeing how deeply Michelin lives its core values—and how every team member embodies them—showed me what it truly means to drive purpose-led innovation. And, of course, it doesn't hurt to walk away knowing we make some of the best tires on the planet!

Amaris Alvarez shared a post earlier this summer on LinkedIn and provides us more context in her comments: I am incredibly grateful for the experience I had with Perfect Game USA. With lots of travel, customer engagement, and being surrounded by people with the overall love for a sport; solidified my desire to continue pursuing my career in sports management.

Mike Denham of Clear Defense Pest Control has three students from Presbyterian College working in his internship and summer sales programs, including Christian Hale - Anderson.

"At ClearDefense Pest Control we try our best to provide internships that help the individual grow in confidence, professionalism, sales etiquette, and leadership. I took on our sales internship in 2013 as a Junior in college. I have been here 13 years now and own multiple branches all while enjoying what I do each and every single day."

"We have a few internships we offer. One is direct sales...We teach young professionals and college students how to gain customers start to finish. We start every day with training and we have a 16 week program that I believe could benefit anybody in the country....We try to make the summer enjoyable so our students want to come back year after year."

"Our other internship is for more of a management track. We hire the students starting at $20 per hour. They work 3 days on and 4 days off. This usually appeals to many athletes who have hard summer schedules as well as other students who have weekend jobs through the summer. Through this program we teach them how to meet with peers and lead them when it comes to personal and professional goals. They have opportunities to work in large group settings where the average age is much higher than a typical college student. These interns interact with homeowners every single day and based on certain metrics they can see where they rank in their own office as well as across the company. Once these students graduate they are entered into our interview process to become branch managers of their own, many times in different cities where we pay for them to relocate."

Christian agrees. He states, "This internship has given me valuable hands-on experience and helped me build skills in customer communication, problem-solving, and independent responsibility while treating homes with pesticides."

"I would recommend this internship to other students who want to build professional skills, gain real-world experience, and earn good pay over the summer."

Meet Olivia, who is interning at Walgreens this summer in a pharmacy tech role. She shares, "The things that I like the most about my internship are that every day is different and presents new challenges, the opportunity to make a positive impact on patients, and the supportive team environment.

"The biggest thing I learned is that compassion, patience, and clear communication are just as important as other pharmaceutical skills.

"Some advice I would give other students is don't be afraid to ask questions and see every task, even the routine ones, as an opportunity to learn and build your confidence and skills."

Here is some insight from the faculty perspective of Dr. Suzie Smith, Robert M. Vance Professor of Business Administration at Presbyterian College who is currently advising five interns, including Julia Yurkovich at Barclays Bank US, pictured here.

"One of the greatest privileges of serving as a faculty internship supervisor is watching students connect classroom learning with the realities of the workplace. Through their journals and reflections this summer, I've seen students develop technical skills in finance, analytics, manufacturing, marketing, and retail while also learning lessons that can't be replicated in a classroom."

"The most meaningful growth often comes from navigating real people and real situations. Students discover how to communicate professionally, stay composed when customers or coworkers are under pressure, adapt when plans change, and contribute to a team with different personalities and perspectives. Those experiences build confidence and judgment in ways that lectures alone cannot."

"I'm especially encouraged when students work for managers who view mistakes as opportunities to coach rather than criticize. The best supervisors help interns help them magnify their strengths. They also recognize weaknesses, provide constructive feedback, and create opportunities to practice until those weaknesses become strengths. That kind of mentorship can shape a student's confidence and career trajectory for years to come."

"I recently spoke with an intern who told me she had learned more in a single month of her internship than she had during an entire academic year. As a professor, I didn't hear that as a criticism of the classroom. I recognized it as a reminder of how essential experiential learning is. The classroom provides the foundation of knowledge, vocabulary, and analytical thinking. Internships bring that foundation to life. When the two work together, students graduate not only knowing concepts but also understanding how to apply them with professionalism, resilience, and confidence."
—Dr. Suzie Smith

So, what does a day in the life of an intern look like? Let's check in on Ryliana Hancheck at the Solicitor's Office in Myrtle Beach, SC. While you may think of that as a great vacation spot, it's all in a days work for Ryliana!

She's learning that there are many hats which get worn by those in the Solicitor's Office, not all of which include the stacks of files she shared...although, there is that, too. A program which was new to her is the treatment class program, where those who are part of the system attend weekly class time to support .

Photos: Arrival at the office; set-up complete for treatment class meeting; quick break before the meeting; the stack of case files to manage; filing and pulling files for the day. Of course, much of her work is confidential, so we just get to see the outline in photos.