Mount Saint Mary College Psychology major Tara Baeza of Washingtonville, N.Y. (center) with her team at Access Supports for Living.
For Mount Saint Mary College students, hard work at an internship often evolves into an extended tenure with the same company – or even a job offer.
When Psychology major Tara Baeza of Washingtonville, N.Y. began her internship at Access Supports for Living, an organization that aids people in the Hudson Valley who are facing the challenges of disability and mental illness, she had high hopes. As it turns out, things went better than she could have anticipated.
As a Human Resources assistant intern, Baeza created, administered, and collected responses to surveys for current Access employees, headed internal research initiatives, and more. A month before the scheduled end of Baeza’s internship with Access, the organization requested that she continue on as a maternity leave replacement throughout the summer.
“I really do like it, because it’s team oriented,” she said of her Access Supports job. “And what I do is different every day. This is a really good experience – it’s showed me that HR is a good career fit for me.”
Baeza said that she was able to obtain the internship with the aid of Anne Ferrari, associate professor of Psychology.
“I found out about Access via google search and spoke about my interest with Dr. Anne Ferrari,” Beaza explained. “She saw that we had a previous affiliation with them and reached out to them personally.”
With classes starting up again, Baeza notes that working and going to college simultaneously is no easy feat. However, it’s something the industrious student has done before. Last year, she completed another internship while succeeding in her classes, all while working in New York City on the weekends as an usher for Disney’s The Lion King and Hamilton.
“It was a really busy semester, but what helped me was time management,” Baeza explained, noting that small pockets of downtime between obligations could often be used to get ahead on college assignments.
Like Baeza had done with Access Supports for Living, Cybersecurity major Kyle Macaluso of New Windsor, N.Y. proved to be an excellent asset during an internship with Central Hudson Gas and Electric Corp.’s cybersecurity department.
“I was given the ability to work on projects and tasks that directly helped the organization,” Macaluso explained. “Through hard work and persistence, I was able to learn the environment and provide value to the Cybersecurity team.”
During his internship with the company last summer, Macaluso protected Central Hudson from cyberattacks via work on email security, incident and alert triage, and the organization’s overall security awareness. His superiors were so impressed with his work and asked him to continue the internship, which he is still working at today.
Macaluso noted that the Mount’s Career Center – and his IT professors – were invaluable in helping him to land the internship.
“I was able to obtain my internship at Central Hudson with the help of the Career Center and my professors,” he said. “After being introduced to different members within the Human Resources department at Central Hudson, I was able to cultivate relationships, which ultimately led to the opportunity to take part in the internship program.”
His Mount education prepared him well for the challenge, Macaluso added.
“Cybersecurity is a rapidly evolving field and the program at Mount Saint Mary College has helped me tremendously in preparing for a future in the field,” he said.