Hot summer internships give students a cool start.

By: Jim Sulski

Tracking down video for satirist Stephen Colbert. Making sure Superman’s cape looks just right. Locating sources for a TV reporter’s investigative piece. Shooting front-page photos for The Baltimore Sun. Training ex-convicts how to earn an honest living.

This is how several enterprising Columbia College Chicago students spent their summers, gaining hands-on experience in their respective disciplines as they worked in summer internships alongside some of the top professionals in their fields. Their stories are indicative of the range of internships held down by dozens of other Columbia students, most for no money, but all with the goal of gaining vital experience—and maybe a foot in the door—with the industries in which they hope to make their careers.

Here are a few of their stories…

Jennell May at "The Colbert Report."
Mauricio Rubio at The Baltimore Sun.
Allison Riggio at WBBM-TV/Channel 2.
Zane Beyer at Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.
Marsena Holsopple at Chicago Christian Industrial League.

Jennell May

On the first day of her internship at “The Colbert Report,” Jennell May looked up to find the show’s star standing over her. “He came over to introduce himself,” May recalls. “I thought that was very classy. He asked me where I was from and when I said Chicago, he smiled and told me he used to live there.”

May, 24, bumps into Stephen Colbert occasionally as she works two days a week as the general production intern on the set of the Midtown Manhattan-based Comedy Central show. She has also met Jon Stewart, star of “The Daily Show” and producer of “The Colbert Report.” And she occasionally assists Colbert’s celebrity guests. But the senior television major didn't take the internship for the chance to rub elbows with celebrities: She wanted the caché of a distinguished production listed on her resume. “That will be a big deal,” she says. “In fact, a lot of the people who work at the show now used to be interns for the show.”

As an intern, May’s duties run the gamut. “I have the fancy title of ‘general production intern,’ but I’m really a gopher,” she says. She gets to put her television production skills to good use transcribing raw footage and helping with post-production. She also finds herself running to the grocery store to stock the studio’s refrigerator with soda, or to Staples for office supplies. And the classic internship duty, fetching coffee for the boss? “I’ve gone to Dunkin Donuts for Stephen’s large iced coffee with skim milk,” she says. “He has to have one every day.”

But there have been plenty of opportunities for her to learn the business. “I spend lots of time sitting in on the executive producer’s writing meetings,” May says. “I also sit in the rehearsals where you can give feedback, and then sit in on the tapings.”

The internship has also allowed her time to bond with the show’s staff. “Everyone here is so classy and it’s such a big family,” May says. One of her favorite experiences was a softball game between the staffs of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” They played in a small park near “The Daily Show” studio. “After the game, we went out for dinner and drinks.”

So, what kind of connections does a student need to land such an internship? May tracked it down on her own. “Comedy Central is my favorite network and ‘The Colbert Report’ is my favorite show, so I began investigating internships back in late 2006 with MTV Networks. [Comedy Central is a division of Viacom's MTV Networks.] The human resources people at MTV called and said they were interested in me as an intern, and then sent my information to the people at ‘The Colbert Report,’” May says. “They interviewed me by phone, and called in February to say I had the job.”

May hopes her summer work will be a stepping stone to a job in the television industry come graduation in 2008. “I would love to work for a daily production such as ‘Colbert’ as a writer/producer,” she says. “I would love to work for any production that involves comedy and current events.”

Mauricio Rubio

During a typical week as a photojournalism intern at The Baltimore Sun, Mauricio Rubio finds himself covering a dizzying array of assignments: A double shooting in East Baltimore, Morgan State defensive tackle Robert Armstrong training in 90-degree-plus weather, Fourth of July fireworks celebrations over the harbor, and the transformation of a Maryland 7-Eleven into a Kwik-E-Mart for The Simpsons Movie.

Unlike internships where students make photocopies and answer phones, Rubio’s stint at one of the nation’s major newspapers is completely hands on. “They're treating me like a staffer,” says Rubio, 21, who works with the newspaper’s staff of 22 professional photographers.

The summer work has greatly enhanced the photography major’s portfolio. He is especially proud of photos that have made the front page, such as the graduation ceremony of plebes at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. “Part of the reason I come back with good photographs,” he says, “is that I'm given good assignments.”

Rubio says he came across the opportunity through digging, and, nearly a year and a lot of networking later, he landed the internship. He had heard about the Baltimore Sun position and others through the National Press Photographers Association. He networked through professionals he knew from the industry, including his uncle, Pulitzer Prize-winner Pablo Martinez Monsivais (B.A. ’94) of the Associated Press Washington bureau. Eventually, Rubio talked with Sun photographer André F. Chung. He shared his portfolio, some of which he built during his junior year as photo editor for The Columbia Chronicle.

“It is imperative to do something like this, and the connections you make are so valuable,” Rubio says. He calls the internship “an incredibly valuable learning experience.”

“The feedback has really started to change my work,” he continues. “When I started the internship, André said I’d shoot like Batman—I would jump in and get out. The internship has helped me understand the meaning of what I was shooting. It’s helped me learn to build the photo, and helped me produce images that are meaningful. Your portfolio is only as strong as your weakest image.”

In early July, Rubio wrote a column for The Baltimore Sun about using his honed skills to gracefully capture a photo of two women grieving over the victims of a double shooting. “I've been learning something new every day.”

After graduating in May 2008, Rubio hopes to return to the Sun—this time as a paid staff photographer. “I would like to come back—it would be great to come back,” he says. “It will also be an election year, and editors will be looking for photographers. But I have no doubt that what I did this summer will help me get somewhere next summer.”

Allison Riggio

On a warm July day, Allison Riggio sat quietly in a car on the west side of Chicago, watching and waiting. When the owner of a Chicago towing company suddenly appeared on the street, Riggio bolted. The 2007 journalism grad was trailing WBBM-TV/Channel 2’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Pam Zekman and her crew, which included producer and Columbia alum Simone Thiessen (B.A. ’99). The crew was trying to track down the elusive businessman for Zekman’s investigation of reports that cars—towed by the company after being involved in accidents—were disappearing and later being resold in Indiana. “We wanted to hear from the horse’s mouth what was happening,” Riggio says. “We were trying to find out whether someone was preying on people who just got in an accident.” The Channel 2 report led to a police investigation into whether the missing cars were sold illegally.

That surprise street interview was one of many investigative-journalism techniques that Riggio, 22, has experienced during her summer internship with Zekman and crew. “I have learned so much,” says Riggio. Most of her job duties revolve around conducting research for Zekman. “I often spend time at the county building looking at court cases for information on the subjects we were investigating,” she says. “Or I might be doing research to see if a business is legitimate. Or I might be working with the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (an Illinois Supreme Court agency) to check out a lawyer.”

Riggio is also responsible for fielding leads from the station’s investigative tip line. “I call people back for more information,” she says. “A good number of these tips are not legitimate.”

Riggio says the biggest benefit of the internship has been working with professionals such as Zekman and Thiessen. “Pam is absolutely great, and it’s wonderful to sit side-by-side with her when she is logging a tape or transcribing an interview,” she says.

“Allison has learned a whole new set of broadcast issues, many of which are applicable to print,” says Zekman. “While much of the job is about the research and the paperwork, she has learned how we tell the story visually for TV.”

Riggio heard about the internship opportunity through Columbia’s journalism department shortly before her graduation in May. “It immediately sounded like something I wanted to do,” she says. Her experience as a Columbia Chronicle editor and her freelance work for The Beachwood Reporter, an online publication, help Riggio snag the job. “Although the internship is unpaid, it is worth it for my resume,” says Riggio, who hopes the experience will be a springboard to a job in the fall. “I've had to eat a lot of ramen noodles, but what I have learned has been amazing.”

Zane Beyer

When Zane Beyer goes into research mode, his primary source is often a comic book. As a game production intern for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (WBIE), one of Beyer’s tasks is to make sure characters in the company’s video games reflect the same behaviors and personalities as they do in the pages of the comic books they originate from.

“For example, I might need to know how the character would react to a situation in the comic to make sure that matches his action in the game,” says interactive multimedia major Beyer, 22, from his office across the street from the WB lot in Burbank, California.

In this case, the characters are usually from the Warner Bros.-owned D.C. Comics universe, home to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Teen Titans. Beyer has also had to police the nuances of other Warner characters, including hundreds of characters from Hanna-Barbera (such as Scooby-Doo) and Looney Tunes (Bugs Bunny and companions).

Scrutinizing WBIE video games in various stages of production, Beyer works with concepts for multiple game platforms (Wii, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, and PC), most which will debut sometime in 2008. Some of the games may still be in the “design document” phase, relegated mostly to 80 or so printed pages. “Mostly, I’m testing the concept on paper,” he says. “What I do is take notes as I read through the document, then organize my thoughts and send those to my boss.” In other cases, the design document may come with examples of animation. “Here, I'm determining if the game got the character right—I might note that Superman’s cape is too maroon,” he says.

Beyer also gets to test more advanced game concepts. “With some of these prototypes, it might just be a game level with no character movement—just game design and objects,” he says. “With others, it might be a full beta version of the game with characters, weapons, and voiceovers.”

Beyer came across the internship opportunity quite serendipitously. “I actually heard about it through a close friend of my mom,” he says. “It sounded interesting, so I sent in my resume.” Serendipitous, perhaps, but not accidental. Beyer says his choice of study gave him an edge for the position. “They had never seen a student coming from a game design major, and were impressed with that.”

The internship a perfect match for him. “All I do when I’m at home is talk about video games,” Beyer says. “Now I get to do it for a job. I've been gaming since way back—the 1990s. I play mostly PC games and I like interacting with people I don't know, so I play a lot online. Right now my favorite game is Warcraft.”

His love for gaming may have helped him score the internship. “I put down on my resume that I was a Guild Leader in Warcraft—that is basically the leader of a playing team for the game,” Beyer says. “My boss loved that and thought it meant I had leadership qualities.”

A junior, Beyer is not sure what path he ultimately wants to take in game design. “I was originally at Columbia studying film and photo, and the second the game design major popped up, I jumped on it,” he says. [Columbia added a game design major in spring 2006.] “But now I'm not sure if I'm more interested in design, development, etc. But this internship is sure helping me sort my career path out.”

Marsena Holsopple

Marsena Holsopple had a simple goal for her summer internship: “Learn about the subculture of a community,” she explains. So when an opening came up in the human resources department of the Chicago Christian Industrial League (CCIL), which runs a number of programs serving the homeless, the senior cultural studies major jumped at the opportunity.

“My definition of human resources is that we allow people to do their jobs,” says Holsopple, sitting in the league’s airy office at Roosevelt Road and California Avenue. “We do a lot of mechanical things like making sure they get paid and handling any technical problems with their paychecks. But there is also an big emotional side—such as working with someone whose wages are garnished. You get to really see into people’s lives.”

The human resources opportunity has exposed Holsopple to a number of real-life job scenarios, from hiring to firing. She works with the organization’s landscaping program, an on-the-job training plan in which participants “are placed in a paid work environment” to learn landscaping and grounds maintenance. The program employs about 80 people to maintain green spaces throughout the city, including Columbia College’s sculpture garden at the corner of 11th Street and Wabash Avenue.

“Ninety percent of the landscaping hires have a criminal record or history,” she says. “That presents some interesting challenges in the hiring process. For example, one recent hire was a Chicago man in his early 20s who was worried about his criminal record. He looked depressed during the interviewing process, but he said he had moved away from criminal activity and had cleaned up his life. He said he was taking care of his kids now. When we said that his criminal record did not matter, he went from one mood to another. That made me realize the gravity of the situation.”

The hiring process is “uplifting,” says Holsopple. “It is so fun to interview people, watch how they apply themselves, and see how happy they are when they finally get the job,” she says. “That is really empowering.”

Holsopple has also experienced some of the harsher aspects of human resources management. “It is difficult when you need to work with an employee on something like their wages being garnished,” she says. “And I have seen the emotional distress that comes with people being laid off.”

Holsopple came across the internship opportunity thanks to her networking skills. A member of an online group focusing on people in their twenties and thirties interested in nonprofit organizations, Holsopple investigated a number of postings promoting summer internships. She was impressed with the range of CCIL programs, such as academic and employment training, and a permanent housing program that includes the league-managed single room occupancy (SRO) building in the middle of Columbia’s South Loop campus at 600 South Wabash Avenue.

“The position I have was not posted,” recalls Holsopple. “But there was information posted on the Chicago Christian Industrial League, and I loved their mission statement. And I knew I wanted to work in human resources. And location was important. I knew I couldn't take on an internship in the suburbs. So I sent in my resume on a hunch.”

The organization called back, interviewed Holsopple, and offered her the position. “This internship has been so great, as I get to do the whole gamut,” says Holsopple, who will graduate after the fall 2007 semester. “If I was in a corporate environment, I might have had much narrower responsibilities. The experience I gain here will make me much more marketable.”