Working through Adversity

Students adapt to change in their internships

In Spring 2020, as students identified summer internships, they discovered many of their plans changed because of COVID-19. Despite this challenge, many students in the Ferguson College of Agriculture made the most of their internship experiences, including seniors Lauren Millang, Ridge Hughbanks and Kaela Cooper.

Continuing Virtually

While most interns faced the task of moving their positions online, Millang, agricultural communications senior, was already there.

In spring 2019, Millang began an internship with Vivayic, a virtual company that consults, strategizes, and designs projects related to learning, training and knowledge transfer. While working with Vivayic, Millang completed two summer internships with the company where she developed resources such as animal flashcards and online learning modules for different company clients.

“Vivayic is a virtual company, and the employees work from home,” Millang said. “The really cool thing is that it allows people to balance their home life and their families.

“I have learned how to use technology so well that when COVID-19 happened, it was a little bit easier for me to adjust to my classes, and I felt more prepared overall,” she said.

During her internship, a typical week for Millang began with a Monday morning conference call to discuss projects with her manager and co-workers as well as team calls and project calls.

Millang’s large project during her summer internship involved creating professional development events for teachers across the United States.

“Before COVID-19, the events were going to be in-person, massive events that involved in-person professional development trainings at various locations,” Millang said.

Social distancing requirements meant Millang had to learn how to transform this production into a completely virtual experience, she said, including how to set up the information for a Zoom-based conference and make different types of promotional videos for social media.

Prior to the pandemic, Vivayic staff would travel to visit clients, attend industry conferences, and host quarterly team meetings. However, travel and in-person meetings were limited during the pandemic.

Millang said she enjoyed her internship and plans to join the Vivayic team full time as a learning designer following her graduation.

“I’ve really appreciated that I found a company that values my own personal growth,” she said.

Lauren Millang

Photo by Taylor Wood.

A Hybrid Model

Hughbanks, agribusiness senior, had a different experience than Millang. His internship was a hybrid.

Hughbanks served as a public policy intern with the Oklahoma Farm Bureau Federation, which consisted of working remotely for three days a week and in person the other two days.

“I was a public policy team member working alongside the executive director and the president on some special projects,” Hughbanks said.

After his internship with American Farm Bureau in Washington, D.C., was postponed, Hughbanks said he reached out to various mentors in an effort to find an available internship. He then reached out to OKFBF, who created a position for him.

“I find myself feeling extremely fortunate for how the cards fell and for their willingness to bring me on as an intern under these circumstances,” Hughbanks said.

During Hughbanks’ internship, he studied the supply and demand of beef processing, planned an innovative farmer panel meeting to discuss a potential future rural venture fund project, and represented OKFBF on a statewide beef task force hosted by the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association and the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry.

The goal was to determine why major disruptions occurred in U.S. beef markets, and share this information with OKFBF members, he said.

“I was studying what was causing these events, why there were apparent lapses in the value chain, and what were the implications of these findings on beef processing moving forward,” Hughbanks said.

Hughbanks said communications during COVID-19 made part of his internship difficult.

At times Hughbanks had to travel out of his way to find a professional working environment with a strong enough internet connection to be in virtual meetings, he said.

Hughbanks knew this was something everyone had to work through, and it did not deter him from making the most of a great experience, he said.

He had a general excitement because he worked on assignments with real-world implications, he said.

“Whenever you are doing a job that matters, it makes it easy to be excited about going to work,” Hughbanks said. “It was such a good summer because we found solutions with the potential to perpetuate real change.”

Ridge Hughbanks

Photo by Taylor Wood

Adapting to Change

However, not all interns had easy transitions into the virtual work place. Cooper, animal science senior, served as a companion animal sales intern with Elanco Animal Health.

Cooper attended the Agriculture Future of America conference in October 2019, where she attended a career fair and met representatives from Elanco.

A week after the AFA conference, Elanco flew her to Indiana for a second interview. “A month before the internship began, I found out it was going to be virtual,” Cooper said. “I was supposed to be going to live in Minneapolis for 12 weeks in a hotel.

“I ended up doing my internship from California, and it went to eight weeks instead of 12,” she said.

A week before her internship, she and four other interns were assigned to a district where the supervisor was gone on maternity leave, she said.

This meant those five interns managed their supervisor’s sales in the district, which included two states.

Kaela Cooper

Photo by Taylor Wood

“In the end, I was really thankful for the experience because I got the most sales experience I could with the situation rather than having one project,” she said.

Cooper did not deny the internship had some difficulties.

“I had to be ready for work around 5:30 a.m. most days because of the time difference,” she said.

She gained most of her experience through emailing with customers, however, the Elanco teams did have Zoom calls on Wednesday and Friday mornings, she said.

Cooper said being moved to a virtual experience was a “let down” because she could not see new areas or experience the agriculture there, but she was grateful to have learned from her internship experience.

TAYLOR WOOD PANHANDLE, TEXAS