Karen Kerwick, Staff

On Tuesday, Feb. 23, La Salle’s chapter of the Association for Women in Communications (AWC) hosted a panel featuring seven past and present students who worked as interns during their time at La Salle. While the event takes place annually, this year the event faced several new challenges. 

One such hurdle was the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Because student and club programming was moved to an online format almost a year ago, making the panel virtual and utilizing tools like Zoom were simple changes. However, the pandemic also created the challenge of a smaller pool of interns. Many companies cancelled their usual internships or limited the number of interns they could take on in Fall 2020 and Spring 2021. Because there were fewer students with internship opportunities, Brother Gerry Molyneaux, the organizer of the panel and director of the Communication Department’s internship courses, reached out to several alumni from the Class of 2020. Three of those alumni joined the panel and shared their experiences.

Nineteen students attended the panel, with representation from all four classes at La Salle. Interns with experience working for Philadelphia sports teams were well represented: interns who had worked with the Philadelphia Eagles, 76ers, Flyers and the since-disbanded Philadelphia Soul were in attendance. Many had both mass media and public relations experience and focused on garnering interest from different members of the audience. 

Among the topics discussed at the panel were how to find an internship, valuable lessons from experience and mistakes made on the job. One intern shared that it is not a reflection of weakness to acknowledge learning opportunities. Other students described their experiences in overdressing for an interview with the general consensus that a best practice is to overdress rather than underdress. “I think coming in dressed up for my interview helped how the other people there looked at me,” said Tyler Pitis ‘20. 

AWC will be hosting an alumni event on March 25 at 6 p.m. featuring an array of La Salle alumni. Because the Communication and Digital Art departments merged this year, this will be the first event hosted by AWC that targets both groups of students by featuring alumni of both disciplines.

kerwickk1@lasalle.edu