“I was given the opportunity to foster a love for IT.”
The Office of the Chief Information Officer has long recognized the need to attract and cultivate fresh IT talent, but in recent years, traditional methods have fallen short in addressing this demand. In response to this challenge, Kenn Wislander, manager of IT Solution Services for Technology Services, decided to take a different approach. Instead of relying solely on recruiting already-trained professionals, Wislander decided to work with an individual not traditionally trained or experienced in IT and develop their skills until they could perform the duties of an IT support professional. Unbeknownst to Wislander, this would be the start of a groundbreaking program whose approach focused on nurturing the needed talent while also bringing together the university IT community. Wislander began a partnership with organizations across the university such as Technology Services, The Grainger College of Engineering, the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and the College of Applied Health Sciences, alongside other area community colleges to create what is now known as the Collaborative IT Intern Program.
After 8 years of training handfuls of individuals, the program officially launched in 2021 with the same vision: to train individuals to thrive as IT support professionals. This year-long immersive experience builds upon broad foundational IT knowledge with classroom training, hands-on hardware training and professional job shadowing. The results of the program have been highly successful. Wislander’s partnerships with university units and area community colleges have resulted in a natural avenue for their interns to find employment opportunities post-program.
Kenn Wislander shared about the many ways that collaborating with other IT units benefits the program and helps it run. “Tech Services has been involved pretty much from the beginning, its Human Resources team helping with the job descriptions, scheduling, onboarding, pay, etc., and other Tech Services teams helping with the personnel issues, finding building locations and securing teams for interns to job shadow. All partnering departments also fully fund their interns to have income, benefits and laptops. These teams have been instrumental in the program.”
The program has fostered strong partnerships within and outside the university while also strengthening the IT community itself by working to increase diversity in the field. The individuals accepted into the program come from diverse backgrounds, with a majority of the interns being from underrepresented communities in IT. The program also has accepted many interns from smaller communities and interns without traditional formal education. One of the program’s greatest feats is its ability to enable those who have gone through the program to be successful in a variety of IT professional roles, despite not having any prior IT professional knowledge.
Darius Summerville, assistant director of Infrastructure Services with Engineering IT Shared Services and an alumni of the program, shared about his experience in the program and how he got started. “At the time, I was in mobile sales and looking for my next steps. I had always been around technology, but never took a deep dive into it. Participating in this program gave me the foundational skills to be an IT professional. It also helped me in building my professional IT network.”
Building a closer-knit, more collaborative network of IT professionals across campus has been an unexpected yet powerful result of the program.
“The individuals [of the program] immediately have a strong team bond that allows broader collaboration opportunities down the road since all end up working in other areas on campus. They also have an alumni group where past participants over the year reach out and communicate as well as come together to meet with the current intern team to check in and provide suggestions and support,” said Wislander.
Ja Nelle Pleasure, IT specialist for Technology Services and alumni of the program, said “[the program] had a unique approach to teaching. We were given tasks and assignments and then prompts and left to ‘fend’ for ourselves. It built a camaraderie between myself and my co-workers. We used the skills we each possessed to come to conclusions and problem solve.”
Starting with just one intern to now accepting a handful of interns each year, this program now creates a pool of new IT Professionals who, upon completing the program, have gone to work directly with many of the partnering campus organizations.
Summerville shared about how the intern program has helped him in his current role as assistant director for Infrastructure Services. “I am currently able to occupy many spaces and topics in my role due to skills I learned during the intern program. That is due in part to the Intern program and instilling the ‘figure-it-outness.’ Now, no problem big or small seems insurmountable. It challenges you to think about how you gain understanding around topics, and it forces you to sharpen that. Honing that skill alone makes you a more effective person overall.”
Being an IT Professional is less to do with how much you know and more to do with how you figure out a problem and resolve it. That’s what this program teaches you.
Andres Rojas, IT specialist for Tech Services and a recent program alumni, shared about the skills and knowledge he learned through the program, “I did not have a background in technology or IT prior to joining… but this program has given me an opportunity to acquire new skills like how to build a computer from the ground up, how to install an operating system and how servers are managed. We also work on customer service which I think is great because it is an important part of IT!”
Ja Nelle Pleasure shared about the hard work needed to complete the program, and how the program met her where she was. “I was terrified. I didn’t feel confident in my ability to learn mainly due to my age and circumstance…. [the program] snuffed out my weaknesses, made me look at them and work through them and built within me a confidence to realize I could do this, my age didn’t matter, and my lack of knowledge didn’t matter. However, it did not come without doing the hard work. There were moments where I froze, or I wanted to say maybe I bit off more than I could chew. I felt like an imposter some days. What I didn’t realize was the lessons we learned in the program were helping me grasp the real-life situations I would face in the field of IT. They gave us great problem-solving issues to learn to solve. They taught us about hardware components. They gave us the terminology needed to communicate properly with other IT professionals and so much more. I was given the opportunity to foster a love for IT.”
Wislander opened up about the impact of the program on him as lead. “The largest impact of the program has been watching people come in and accomplish so much in a relatively short period of time. They become more confident and empowered when it comes to IT, and also how they interact with each other and other IT professionals on campus as a result of their time in the program.”
Wislander and Summerville run the program alongside alumni Haeran Lee, IT field consultant for the Office of the CIO.
Lee shared about how rewarding it is to see people’s lives changed through the program. “Being part of running the program has given me the great privilege to see individuals who came from backgrounds with no IT knowledge grow to become successful IT professionals who are not only excited for the new career opportunities that the internship has provided, but is excited to give back to the community. The lesson that I hope every intern learns coming out of the program is that being an IT Professional is less to do with how much you know and more to do with how you figure out a problem and resolve it. That’s what this program teaches you.”
Currently, there are around 15 employees working as IT professionals after completing the intern program.
Each new cohort begins August 1 and runs through the end of July. During the program, interns complete about six months of classroom training, three to four months of job shadowing, and the last few months are reserved for working with their partnering departments while having additional training sessions. Applications for the program open in February or early March and can be found via LinkedIn, Facebook, and the partnering units. The application process begins with a submission, then email interviews, and live interviews, with final selections made by May. The internship is a full-time paid position and is not open to people fully enrolled at the university or to individuals who have not yet graduated high school. Reach out to Darius Summerville (dsummer2@illinois.edu) or Kenn Wislander (wislande@illinois.edu) if you would like more information.