In the film Legally Blonde first-year law student and intern Elle Woods questions witnesses during a trial and wins a case. Annalise Keating, in the TV show How to Get Away with Murder, expects her five interns to do just that—help her get away with murder. In real life, though, being an intern is far less dramatic. Internships give students an opportunity to learn how real-world businesses function. They spend a semester (or more) in an office setting, working in a defined position, not just pouring coffee and making photocopies. Shakir Campbell, a senior majoring in Security Risk Analysis at Penn State Altoona, spent his final semester as an intern for Trilogy Solutions, Inc. (TSI), located just outside Washington, DC.
TSI is a “veteran-owned, minority-owned small business providing IT services to government agencies,” Campbell says. They “maintain, organize, and build the architecture for Microsoft/365 systems and then train end-users.” They also train people in SharePoint and migrate organizations that are moving from two platforms to Microsoft Teams, which is a single platform.
A small but very busy company, TSI was awarded an IT service contract with the Defense Acquisition University (DAU), a corporate university for the Department of Defense that “offers military training and services for federal civilian staff and contractors,” according to their website. Campbell was their first intern.
“Their main reason for needing an intern,” Campbell explains, “was to update the Microsoft roadmap.” In this case “roadmap” does not mean a map of the Microsoft offices but it is directions: a “roadmap” is a list of upcoming changes and updates to Microsoft’s products, such as Teams, Whiteboard, and Forms. “My duties included daily updates. I reviewed the daily roadmap, provided a summary for these functions, and sent them to my supervisor.” He also tracked the DAU courses as they migrated to the single-platform Teams and participated in weekly conference meetings.
With the pandemic, of course, Campbell had to work virtually instead of in person, which he admits is “not ideal,” especially for a first-time intern position. He also did not have security clearances so he had limitations on what he could do, for example, he could not look at internal documents.
Despite that, Campbell admits he learned some valuable and lifelong lessons. “I gained a lot of experience by working with customers.” Specifically, he says, there were “generational differences. I hadn’t had a lot of experience working with older people. It’s difficult to tailor training exercises as customers have a variety of comfort levels when it comes to technology.” So he learned to be patient. Another skill that future employers will really appreciate: “It’s very important to meet deadlines.”
The unique work situation did not hold him back, according to his supervisor and director of marketing at TSI, Trish Zeleznik. “While assisting us with getting our clients prepared for migration from BlackBoard/Webex to MS Teams, Shakir took initiative and would report what new functionality and features were being released by Microsoft,” she says. Campbell’s work was critical for her own project: “I was working on the contract so I was heavily dependent on his reports in order to prepare our clients using Teams.” Although she admits having an intern for the first time was a “learning experience” for both of them, she says, “It was a wonderful experience and we wish all of our future interns were like Shakir.”
Dave Barnes, Campbell’s internship advisor and teaching professor in Information Systems and Technology, had every confidence in Campbell’s abilities, saying, “Shakir has been an outstanding student during his time at Penn State Altoona. His courses and the effort that he put into learning about computer security prepared him well for this internship. He extended his academics into this role and the experience has given him a platform from which he will excel. TSI was a great opportunity for him, and he made the most of it.”
—Therese Boyd, ’79