By Briar Jensen, ’20 advertising
As a transfer, I didn’t have many opportunities to take an internship between my junior and senior years. So after my senior year in the summer of 2020, I took my required 499 internship with Story Construction as their marketing communications intern. Story Construction is a mid-sized construction company specializing in schools, commercial projects and wastewater treatment plants. A few of their notable projects include Hilton Coliseum, RACOM in Marshalltown, the new Ames High School and the Gerdin business building expansion on Iowa State’s campus. Located in Ames, I was able to still work in the office while following many guidelines due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although a lot of our trade shows and public events were canceled, I still had a busy summer doing smaller projects. While editing quite a few videos for training purposes, I was able to apply skills I learned in my video production class at Greenlee. I also put together safety material brochures and handouts and wrote for our company’s quarterly newsletter. A major project I helped with was migrating content to Story Construction’s new website. Previously, I was unfamiliar with web design and UX but I caught on fairly quickly and was surprised by how much I enjoyed web building. I was also on the lookout for new trends in social media and construction. That’s not something I had even Googled before I started, but it’s something I still keep up with today.
Marketing communications is something I didn’t think was possible with my degree in advertising. However, nothing could be further from the truth. This field involves so many moving parts from every major at Greenlee. I conducted interviews, wrote articles, made social media posts, checked exposure rates and created digital media to communicate with future and current employees. Whether through an internship or a job someday down the road, I encourage every student at Greenlee to look into being the “one-person show” working on marketing and communications at a company. Interning for a company whose marketing department is one individual really expanded my horizons on what I thought was possible after college.
One of the things that also helped last summer was receiving a Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication 499A internship scholarship. I was lucky enough to have a paid internship, but that funding from the scholarship covered the additional tuition costs for my summer semester.
Editor’s note: Greenlee 499A internship scholarships support students who have a primary major in advertising, journalism and mass communication or public relations and are completing their required 400-hour internships. The application is available each spring.