Press Release: Area students gain valuable experience interning at WestGate Academy
August 8, 2017
Area students gain valuable experience interning at WestGate Academy prior to furthering their education and careers. [caption id='attachment_3002' align='alignnone' width='300']
Pictured from left to right: Tye Collins, Olivia Wells, Malea Toon, Felicity Graf, and Clayton Thomas[/caption]
WestGate@Crane, Ind. – August 9, 2017- This summer, five students from Bloomfield and Loogootee High Schools interned at the WestGate Academy Conferencing & Training Center. Students learned about the management, organization, customer relations, and marketing of government and community events and activities. WestGate Academy is the event center within WestGate@Crane Technology Park, a tech park consisting of more than 30 small to Fortune 500 companies.
On the intern’s first day, they were able to attend the ribbon cutting for Virginia-based Alion’s $4.3 million facility expansion in WestGate@Crane Technology Park.
“On our first day we attended an event at one of the newer buildings at the Tech Park,” says summer intern Olivia Wells. “We were able to meet the Lieutenant Governor.”
As the only tri-county technology park in Indiana, interns were exposed to diverse business operations. Interns were able to apply their interests in a working environment prior to furthering their education in college.
“It was beneficial before going to college because I got to learn about my major which will be management and marketing,” says Felicity Graf, an incoming freshman at Indiana State University. “I learned that I do enjoy marketing before I took a bunch of marketing classes.”
Olivia Wells, Felicity Graf, Tye Collins, Clayton Thomas, and Malea Toon were the five interns at WestGate Academy.
The funding that supported this project was a Skill Up! Indiana grant from the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. The grant was awarded to the Center for P-16 Research and Collaboration at Indiana University. The P-16 Center subcontracted with DirectEmployers Institute to provide this opportunity. A total of 65 students from Bloomfield and Loogootee schools participated in a job fair at WestGate Academy where they presented resumes and interviewed with prospective employers for the 40 intern positions. DirectEmployers, NSWC Crane, Work One, and Jasper Engines were all partners in the grant.