e Power of Internships
USAA, SAN ANTONIO Keith Lancaster led worship on Wednesday night.
Chris Courtright Jacob Ackerman
I
nformation technology majors from ACU are eager to head to San Antonio these days, and it’s for far more than the Tex-Mex cuisine and tourist attractions.
Fall-Winter 2013
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DANIEL GOMEZ
BC42
DANIEL GOMEZ
e migration is to intern at USAA, the insurance and financial services giant whose sprawling headquarters on Interstate 10 serve military families around the world. Ten undergraduate students from ACU’s School of Information Technology interned at USAA in Summer 2013. Other Abilene Christian grads work throughout USAA but nine with IT backgrounds have been added since the company began its college hire program in 2008. All but one work in San Antonio, with another in its new office in Plano. Chris Courtright (’84), lead software developer and integrator at USAA, has a unique perspective on the growing trend. “ACU has a stellar reputation. e students are bright and enthusiastic and their core values really do align well with USAA’s,” Courtright said. “e scuttlebutt is that the ACU interns do so well that when they interview at USAA, there is a long list of managers asking for specific ACU students.” Courtright said that ultimately, interns are placed based on their technical skills, learning goals and alignment to managers’ business needs. But the track record speaks volumes. One recent hire, 2013 graduate Jacob Ackerman, reflects the confidence USAA has in IT majors from ACU. A native of San Antonio, Ackerman interned in Summer 2011 and 2012, then did USAA contract work back on campus during his 2012-13 senior year while finished up a B.S. degree in computer science software engineering. He became a full-time employee this summer. His internships featured work on iPhone and iPad apps, and USAA’s remote deposit capture app that allows customers to deposit a check after taking a photo of it with a smartphone. His contract work involved experimenting with improvements to the image processing algorithms on check images and bug fixes in iOS apps. “I was surprised that USAA was willing
to invest two years worth of internships and part-time work with me before I came on full time,” Ackerman said. “rough a combination of paychecks and education assistance, USAA paid for the lion’s share of the last half of my college degree. I have not heard of another company pursuing new hires in this manner.” Finding future good-fit employees is a prime objective for companies with serious intern programs, as USAA has proven. “We want our interns to experience what it is like to work within a large IT organization. Each internship position has a specific, meaningful work-related goal defined for it. We want the interns to have an impact that will continue past their time with us,” said Courtright, who has worked at USAA for nearly 22 years and is co-leader for recruiting interns and full-time hires at ACU. “But most important, we want them to see what the culture of USAA is like and whether they fit in well with their co-workers. Each intern has to do a presentation at the end of their tenure with us that covers what they’ve learned while they are here. eir experience here exposes them to the multiple career paths that are available to them within our company.” Ackerman appreciated USAA’s thoroughness in working with interns. “I learned much about being professional and about communication,” Ackerman said. “I found that USAA was less interested in what I could produce and how fast I could produce it, and more interested in how I fit into my team and how I collaborated with others.”
AC U TO D AY
Ackerman also said it was fun to be doing work that mattered beyond a course assignment. “At school, if my code was not the most efficient or had a couple of bugs, I would receive a grade that was a bit lower than it would have been otherwise,” he said. “As an intern, with my code eventually being used by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, everything I did felt much more significant.” He believes what he has seen thus far at USAA indicates that culture fit and character are more important than raw knowledge. “Interviewing, I thought employers would be most interested in how many things I knew and how quickly I could implement them to solve problems,” Ackerman said. “In actuality, as long as you know how to learn, all of the new technologies and processes can be taught. Character and values cannot be taught so easily, and ACU graduates have consistently displayed characteristics that make them valuable in a team environment. From all of my experiences, they are quick to assist others and readily share knowledge, and these are rare traits in an IT workplace.” Courtright said he enjoys having a growing number of Wildcats in his workplace, which benefits from the enthusiasm they bring to USAA. “eir perspective on how technology can be consumed is valued because they don’t see limits yet and they challenge the workforce to think differently about how problems can be solved,” he said. 䊱