Students prepare for the future with internships

May Lee with her internship supervisor (left), Ryan Woon with his fellow EDB Interns (right). Images provided by May Lee and Ryan Woon.

For Yale-NUS College students who will be graduating next year, particularly the international students, the recent semester break was the last opportunity they had to engage in a full-time short-term internship before embarking on their postgraduate journeys. Three students took the opportunity to participate in programmes organised by the Yale-NUS Centre for International & Professional Experience (CIPE) to aid their professional development.

Ryan Woon took up an internship with Singapore’s Economic Development Board’s (EDB) Healthcare Team. In his role, Ryan assessed the sustainability efforts of biopharmaceutical companies in Singapore and helped develop ways for EDB to help these companies in their green transition.

“For my project, I had to work with other departments within EDB as well as liaise with agencies and companies outside of the organisation,” Ryan shared. “From that, I gained valuable real-world experience tackling numerous problem statements, and I could feel a tangible impact in my work.”

Ryan’s analytical thinking and client engagement skills were developed as a result of his projects. Not only did he participate in meetings with C-suite executives from the companies he was working with, he also engaged with them directly and listened to their concerns. Overall, this gave him an overview of the work that EDB does to engage stakeholders and develop Singapore’s economy.

Aside from that, Ryan also formed a good relationship with his colleagues and enjoyed spending time with at social gatherings after work.

Ryan and his EDB colleagues at a gathering after work. Image provided by Ryan Woon.

While Ryan worked in the government sector, Angie Yoedzer’s internship was AVPN’s Impact Investing team.

AVPN is a network of social investors in Asia. Angie’s role with the Impact Investing team focused on generating positive social and environmental results by addressing specific societal challenges—such as improving education, promoting clean energy, or providing access to healthcare—while receiving a financial return on such an investment.

As her work dealt with societal challenges, Angie gained hands-on experience conducting market research on the Asia Pacific region. She also did daily operations related tasks, such as customer relationship management. These developed her soft skills and she learned to be more organised, while improving her networking skills.

“The daily office lunches are something I won’t forget,” Angie reminisced. “The entire office, from the management level to the interns, sat and ate together.”

Above all, Angie’s internship gave her exposure to the finance industry, which she much appreciated.

“AVPN is an ecosystem builder, so I had the opportunity to meet stakeholders from various organisations,” Angie said. “This was great for someone like me who had very little knowledge of the industry, because I was able to learn about the various nuances within the industry directly from those involved.”

Besides internships in Singapore, some students pursued internship opportunities overseas. May Lee interned at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in the United States of America. At UPenn, May was a Product Manager and Research Scholar, who assisted a team of psychologists, headed by Dr Angela Duckworth and Dr Lyle Ungar, with creating an AI-powered educational technology chatbot. This chatbot was designed to help high school students understand and apply the positive psychology concept of Grit.

May (front, right most) with Dr Angela Duckworth and Dr Lyle Ungar. Image provided by May Lee.

Positive psychology is a discipline that helps people live fulfilling and healthy lives with the aid of psychological tools. May has been fascinated by this field since middle school, and had listened to Dr Duckworth’s TED Talk on Grit previously.

Therefore, when UPenn became a study abroad partner institution of Yale-NUS College, May jumped at the opportunity to study at UPenn and meet Dr Duckworth there in person. While studying abroad, May met Dr Duckworth who invited her back to the United States to do a summer internship.

Initially, the considerable workload for such a technologically advanced product made May nervous, but she found herself rising to the challenge. She led the design and content of the chatbot, and did a pilot test for the chatbot with high school students, who are the target demographic group for the product.

“This internship has been an absolute game-changer for me,” May shared. “I learned so much about the intricacies of human-computer interaction, user experience, and prompt engineering. The project gave me the chance to ask big questions, like how human-like we want our AI to be, and explore those questions in a hands-on way.”

Spending their semester break on internships has enabled our students to gain valuable skills and insights that will aid their future development. Their experiences have also enriched their personal growth and helped them understand more about themselves, and what they want to pursue in the future.