The Career and Professional Success office provides students with opportunities to grow professionally. Photo courtesy of  @ButlerCareer on “X”. 

MAXWELL COLLINS | STAFF REPORTER | mcollins1@butler.edu 

As the 2023-24 academic year comes to an end, many students are looking to put in their internship applications for next school year. Between college-specific internship resources and Butler’s Career and Professional Success (CaPS) office, Butler offers multiple paths to approach students’ passions. From the Compass Center to the Ancient Mediterranean Cultures and Archaeology Lab, students are able to chase their passions in a professional environment while on campus — or off — to better prepare them for the future. 

Jade Eilers – Compass Center interfaith intern 

The Compass Center, formerly the Center for Faith and Vocation, offers a variety of religious and interfaith internship opportunities, both on and off campus. Junior journalism major Jade Eilers has worked as the Compass Center’s interfaith intern for the 2023-24 school year. In her role, Eilers is the chair of Interfaith Council, tasked with bringing new ideas to the group, guiding conversations and helping council members make a lasting impact through a large interfaith event held on campus in the last couple of months of the spring semester. 

Eilers is also a Compass Center scholar, a scholarship given to selected students who are passionate about leadership, religious exploration and social justice. Eilers shared that Compass Center scholars are required to achieve a certain amount of interfaith engagement per semester, and one way this can be done is through joining Interfaith Council as a member or as the chair through the interfaith internship. 

“When it comes to getting my hours with the internship, the first 10 hours of interfaith work I do count towards my scholarship,” Eilers said. “Then from that point on, it becomes paid. So that’s actually really cool. It’s definitely beneficial to have a [Compass Center] scholar in the chair position, but definitely not limited to that.” 

While Eilers is sad her time in the position is coming to an end, sharing that if she could she would stay in the position forever, she emphasized the influence that each chair can have in fostering a respectful and healing Interfaith Council discussion. 

“My favorite thing that we’ve done has been talking about [the queer community] and religion,” Eilers said. “That is something that is really near and dear to my heart. I refuse to believe the narrative that all of my favorite people and the people that have been kindest to me are going to hell for just loving who they love or being who they are. So I think being able to have a conversation has been really healing for me as a Christian to understand a variety of people and where they’re at with their own religion.” 

Eilers said there is something unique about Interfaith Council: a sense of empathy for each other and a place to be vulnerable, especially during meetings where passionate discussions are had. 

“The meeting that I’m the proudest of was the conversation about Palestine and Israel,” Eilers said. “I was terrified. I never want to offend anyone, especially when I don’t have a stake in the matter; but people in college can sometimes be very ignorant, but in [the Interfaith Council] we’re paying attention. I felt like it was such a vulnerable space, we were so empathetic and no one was screaming at each other. We were listening to hear people, not to speak next. I was really proud of college-age people for having a conversation that most grown adults can’t have.” 

Emma Podvorec – Ancient Mediterranean Cultures and Archaeology Lab intern 

The Ancient Mediterranean Cultures and Archaeology Lab (AMCA) opened its doors in 2016 to students with a range of interests. From ancient artifact management and database building to educational community outreach and social media management, there is something for everyone in this internship. 

Emma Podvorec, a junior criminology-psychology and anthropology double major, is a current lab intern and has recently taken on transcribing an artifact with Egyptian hieroglyphics. 

“I do a lot of the collection management and cataloging of different [artifacts],” Podvorec said. “Right now, I actually discovered that we have the top of a funeral cone from Egypt, so I’ve been trying to translate those hieroglyphics all day. I’m very excited.” 

Podvorec said an internship with various opportunities is “whatever you make it.” While some interns handle finances or Butler Bound tours, others work on temperature control for delicate artifacts and translating ancient languages. 

The environment of the AMCA lab may take outsiders by surprise. Podvorec shared that she thought it would be like a biology lab with people wearing hazmat suits. Instead, everyone is in plain clothes focusing on their own projects in their available time. Depending on a student’s interests, an internship in the AMCA lab can be approached in a variety of ways to better suit individual passions. 

“Honestly, follow your dreams with it,” Podvorec said. “I’m listening to my little 3-year-old self right now. Definitely do what you’re passionate about, and I feel like this is a great way to discover those passions.” 

Gavin Wright – Crowe Kodiak Solutions intern 

Off-campus opportunities include companies such as Crowe, which helps students explore future career paths. Companies that expand past one career field, like Crowe, offer experiences in accounting, consulting and data science. 

Gavin Wright, a sophomore healthcare and business major, recently accepted a summer internship with Crowe’s new healthcare consulting firm, Kodiak Solutions. Wright shared that this internship will allow him to see the inner workings of healthcare consultation which will support him in his future career path. 

“My internship is doing financials and reimbursements for hospitals in the Indianapolis area,” Wright said in an email to The Butler Collegian. “In short, I am working on where all the payments are going for healthcare companies and hospitals to ensure they are making the money they need to continue serving the community.” 

For Wright, the application process started very early on in the academic year. Even when looking for the summer of 2024, Wright said he started looking a full year earlier. 

“The top companies give out their internships toward the early fall of the year, so I wanted to get ahead of the game to work with a highly respectable firm,” Wright said. “I spent my summer reaching out to people on LinkedIn, making a list of potential companies that I would be interested in and refining my resume.” 

One problem Wright ran into when looking for an internship as a sophomore was that some companies require students to be a junior or senior in order to apply. This roadblock may exist when students look for off-campus internships, but Wright’s advice is to keep trying in spite of the “no’s.” 

“To prepare for the interview I met with Katie [Nelson] at the [CaPS] office and we just walked  through potential questions I would be asked,” Wright said. “A helpful tool we used was Handshake [where] a lot of students or past interviewees post questions they received from the interview to help you prepare for similar questions.” 

When it comes to resume building, some can be discouraged about their lack of work experience, a concern to which Wright shared some insight. 

“Companies are not expecting you to have the experience of a 50-year-old,” Wright said. “Be able to storytell. That is what separates a good interview from a great interview. If you can tell your story and explain how an experience on your resume relates to the job, you are golden.”