This summer, two rising Chatham seniors completed Chatham High School's Career Experience Internship Program (CEIP). Through this program, Seema Patel and Waylon Sotherden gained 54 hours of unpaid internship experience (along with 27 hours of classroom instruction).Seema completed an internship in nursing at Columbia Memorial Health, while Waylon completed a business internship at Sonoco Crellin.
At Columbia Memorial, Seema was able to observe a lot in her 54 hours. She was able to not only interact with the medical staff, but also interacted with patients and assisted them when possible. Seema was able to attend meetings with the healthcare professions, administration of medicine and patient care, and how the patient discharge process worked. From each registered nurse she worked with, Seema learned a lot of their best practices and was extremely appreciative of their friendliness and instruction. One positive experience at the hospital she had was with a woman with dementia. Seema shared the experience of how she formed a relationship with the patient and was able to comfort the woman and made sure that she remembered to eat. For a separate patient suffering from depression, Seema was a positive, encouraging influence.
At Sonoco Crellin, Waylon's internship experience was coordinated by Scott Lundy, Director of Global Operations-Industrial and Specialty Plastics. Waylon learned the high importance of Sonoco, and how integral and embedded safety is in all of their processes. Mr. Lundy provided valuable workplace knowledge to Waylon about the importance of soft skills such as professionalism, being on time, situational awareness, communication, and teamwork. Waylon was provided opportunities to observe every department within the manufacturing plant including operations, materials handling, quality control and assurance, and marketing. Throughout these processes, he was shown how each area's success is integral to the success of the facility, how they all must work together to accomplish the company's goals, and monitoring/controlling financial performance.
For the classroom requirements, Seema and Waylon completed a project on their potential future career, learned and reflected upon workplace topics such as time management, safety, coworker harassment, behaviors that can get a person fired, and more. They worked on creating a cover letter and a resume as well, which included their internship experience. They also were required to maintain a timesheet, a training plan, and a journal. For their final project, each created a presentation about the occupation, themselves, and their internship.
Former Chatham work-based learning coordinator and now Questar III New Visions teacher, Michael Loomis, noted, "Internships are such a valuable experience. Even though it is only 54 hours, students learn so much about the career field in which they are interested and whether or not they would like to continue in that area. Their resume instantly becomes flush with relevant tasks, projects, and observations. The growth of their communication skills and the explosion of ideas of what their future may hold is amazing."
Seema plans to continue along her medical path as she will be in the Questar III Certified Nurse Aide (CNA) program this year. Waylon will continue balancing his senior year of classes and his part-time job. Both plan to attend college after graduating from Chatham, majoring in their respective areas.