Name: Benard Onyango

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: Pennsylvania General Energy | Title of Your Position: Software Developer

Major(s)/Minor(s): Information Systems

Expected Graduation Year: Master Student, May 2015

Briefly describe your internship, co-op, research, or service-learning opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

I interned at Pennsylvania general Energy as Software Developer. It is such a nice place to work. I particularly enjoyed the friendliness of my fellow programmers. They were very helping in answering any questions that I needed answered. My daily routine began with programming in ASP.NET(C#) using MVC framework.My first assignment was to create of an app for the PGE legal department. In addition, I was also I asked to help with the completion of a web based application which was about 80 % done. Despite some challenges, I really enjoyed my internship. I gained a wealth of knowledge from it.

Describe the process of obtaining your internship, research, or co-op opportunity.

A friend of mine told me that there was a position open for software developer intern. I immediately went online to learn something about the company. While I was waiting to hear from them, I spent some time reading about some of the requirements(technologies) for the job that were not very familiar to me. This was very helpful on the day of the interview. Something I would like to mention is that they were asking for 1.5 years of experience to be hired. Even though I did not have that much experience, I did not shy away from applying.

Which of the following resources did you use to find your current experience?

Network

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

The Employees at PGE were very friendly especially the programming team and my supervisor. They made sure I did the work. However, they were very kind in answering any questions that I may have had.

What have you gained from your experience that you could not have gained from another opportunity?

By working on real, hands-on project, I was able to gain in the following technologies. - ASP.NET MVC 4 and 5 Framework - Visual Studio 2012 IDE, Entity Framework 5 with Migrations - HTML5, CSS, JavaScript (JQuery and Ajax), GIT Repository Secondly, I build good professional networks that may become relevant especially in my job hunt after graduation.

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

My advice would be to make sure you distribute copies of your resume to people. You never know when an opportunity may become available.

Please provide a short reflection or quote about what you liked most about your position / earning internship credit / the internship placement process.

This internship brought the best out me! It taught me that all I needed was an opportunity and a challenge, to fully comprehend my capabilities.

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