Students' experiences varied. Some worked as project managers, others as systems analysts and technical developers, said Madhavi Kari, IST internship coordinator. Projects ranged from networking a new office building, redesigning a company Web site and creating more efficient databases. The range of industries employing IST interns included defense, pharmaceutical, financial and consulting companies. A number of students also opted for non-profit organizations.

Brian Smyk spent his summer working in the IT department of QVC where he was responsible for maintaining and creating content for QVC.com. The senior IST major used various programming languages to code Web site-functionality enhancements, developed new ideas to improve customer experience, and networked inside and outside the company.

"In addition to gaining technical and communication skills, I learned about the corporate environment and the importance of maintaining relations with outside vendors to complete various jobs," Smyk said.

A one-credit internship is required of all IST majors, but many students opt for more than one internship. To date, IST students from all campuses have completed about 3,790 internships.

This past summer, Adam Zolyak, Class of '05, helped redesign the problem-tracking application used by PNC's enterprise data warehouse group. To identify the business and technical needs, he interviewed more than two dozen people from different departments.

"While I had experience in creating requirement documents from IST projects, working for a large corporation made me realize the importance of business justification for all requirements," Zolyak said. "I had to ask, 'How does this help PNC?' Then I was able to create the business and functional requirement documents."