Internships Provide Students with Valuable Experience and Higher Chances of a Job After Graduation

A business education at BGSU goes beyond traditional classroom learning. It is interactive teaching, experiential learning, and engagement through extracurricular activities.  The business program encourages students to participate in internships and co-ops to not only provide hands-on experience that develops a student’s professional career, but it enhances the marketability of students to employers after graduation.

More than 75% of our business students participate in at least one internship during their college education, and many of these companies offer their interns a full-time position after graduation.  At BGSU, students are encouraged to visit the job fairs on campus as early as their freshman year to explore the job possibilities and talk with employers which is unique for a business school.

Andrew Ludwig, a marketing student in the Class of 2016, provides a narrative of his valuable eight-month co-op experience.

I worked as a co-op at Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems during the spring and summer of 2014.  I took a semester off so I could take advantage of this opportunity, and it was one of the best decisions of my college career.  I know that the connections that I made at Bendix will help me advance my career after I graduate from Bowling Green State University.

In a rotational co-op position at Bendix, I spent half of my time in the Sales Operations Department and the other half of my co-op in the Marketing Department.  I was able to go out into industry and apply what I learned at BGSU to Bendix.  I was involved in many different activities, ranging from running reports in SAP and working with company metrics data, to directing a film crew to produce new marketing materials for Bendix.  My favorite part of the co-op was that I was able to get sales experience in the real world.  I traveled with a sales representative from Bendix for one day and I helped lead a product training seminar at a trailer manufacturer.

I would recommend that all students try to complete an internship or co-op during their college career.  The experiences that I had at Bendix solidified my goal of becoming a technical salesperson after graduation.  BGSU has lots of resources to help students obtain internships, and I was able to work at Bendix because of the connection that I made with a recruiter at the BGSU career fair.