By: Paige Hathaway
My internship at ECS was the best internship experience I have ever had. No, I am not saying that because I work there full time, but because this internship taught me so much, and I felt like a valuable asset to the company.
During my tenure at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I completed a total of three internships and four client-based semester-long projects that can in a sense also be counted as internships. These internships and projects ranged from working in law firms, equitable housing companies, and SAS (Statistical Analysis System). I am grateful for these other experiences. However, ECS was the internship that was the best for me.
My internship at ECS started out as just a requirement for my Master’s degree but ended with me finding my full-time workplace. During my internship, I worked closely with the Vice President of Research, Mary Ann Wojton. Working with Mary Ann, I was able to improve my quantitative analysis skills, an area that I did express I needed help with beforehand. This meant a lot to me as an intern, because it showed me that ECS was equally invested in my knowledge and growth as I was. I also got the opportunity to travel to work with clients in person on-site visits. This was awesome because I was able to see the data collection happen in real-time, which I later would using during the data analysis part of my internship.
In both undergraduate programming and graduate programming at UNC I learned how to code in Stata, and R and do data visualization in Tableau. It was during my internship at ECS that I learned a third coding operation system called SPSS. From the data that I collected during my site visit, I then learned how to analyze it in SPSS. This allowed me to add a useful skill to my repertoire. After improving my quantitative skills through data analysis, I was able to write reports based on the various data analyses I completed.
In addition to the educational part of my internship, I was able to make wonderful professional relationships with colleagues. Everyone was super friendly, welcoming, and willing to work with me. During my internship, I was able to assist with other projects. Everyone I worked with seemed very grateful for the help and very willing to teach me. I can not say that this is the same as other internships that I had. The work environment was very flexible and respectful of my school schedule, while also being safe, accepting, and respecting who I am as a person. This is another quality that I can not say I had at other internships.
Overall, my experience interning at ECS is hands down the best internship I had. This internship fostered amazing growth in my skills through hands-on experience. I would recommend this internship to other students because ECS values your growth and your output. I am very grateful that this internship turned into a full-time position for me and I am excited to keep growing with the company and to hopefully one day pour into another intern the way the employees at ECS poured into me.