Erica Garcia graduated in 2021 from Olivet Nazarene University with a bachelor’s in Communication Studies, with two minors in Professional Writing and Creative Writing. During the time Garcia needed an internship to graduate, COVID-19 had delayed her plans. Luckily, Dr. Jay Martinson, the previous Chair of the Department of Communication, offered her an internship to work by his side helping the students and staff of ONU at the Center of Online Learning and Innovation.
Internships at ONU
Garcia’s internship was work on-site and in-person, and ONU graciously let their students intern in an easy and safe way. Garcia wanted to make it more enjoyable in tough times, she did this by making her space more fun and organized for her hours of research and writing.
Originally supposed to be more writing-based for an app involved with student persistence, Garcia was brought in as a writer. This internship changed slightly due to the needs and roles of what was needed at the time. Garcia did countless forms of research into different persistence topics. For example, time management, goal setting, nutrition, sleep hygiene, study skills, and anything a student needed to be successful in college and beyond. Garcia also dove into databases and synthesized what needed to be created for students to take easy-to-understand information and digest that, whether that may be in blogs or small articles, they wanted the students to apply it into their own lives. Garcia mainly researched throughout her internship but incorporated much more to get quantity and quality out of her internship. This incorporation included planning for the app’s “narrative structure” and “curriculum” that was needed. She did get to use both of her minors at the end of her internship, before transitioning into a graduate assistant (GA) position.
“She’s a really outside-of-the-box thinker and a joy to work with. Erica’s a really hard worker and knows how to get the job done effectively. Her creativity and passionate work ethic are really inspiring.”
— Jordyn Dunbar, Graduate Assistant at Heritage
Benefits
During Garcia’s time at ONU, she had many opportunities to research different classes, projects, and papers. However, her internship was the first time she had to do a large volume of research and work on pulling out not just an understanding of the topics, but what is known about them. She explains that there has been a great amount of research, studies, and experiments, asking what they know about it and what they can do to refurbish that information to make it easy to understand and apply it to students’ lives. This was how Garcia was able to take her knowledge of research and put it to the next level and change someone else’s life, just like her life was changed by researching. For more about the importance on having an internship, check out Kayla Abraham’s post.
“And that takes a different level of understanding, you know, it’s one thing to know and take the research of the study and what the academic implications are for that but it’s another thing to be able to take that information and bring it together in a way that is easy to understand even if you don’t have the full context of all of the studies that have been done on that particular skill.”
Erica Garcia
Where is Erica Garcia Now?
Advice
Most students at Olivet Nazarene University, just like Erica Garcia, having either gone through their internships or are waiting on an internship to start, or maybe have not found one yet, will learn and apply their skills in their lives and further them in the future. All in all, everyone is at their own pace and discovering what they love to do in this world. It is important to take what you love and continue learning and developing skills in order to enhance your passions and what you will do next in your journey.
