By Beth Meyers, Human Resources Manager
At Morningstar, an internship is an opportunity to grow a career and our company. For us, an internship is not a yearly crop of students who come in for a few months to perform a set number of tasks before returning to school. Before the search process even begins, we take a critical look at our slate of projects to ensure there are opportunities for an intern to make meaningful contributions to the project, and for us to provide mentorship and hands-on training.
We feel strongly that an internship should be meaningful work and provide the intern with both an opportunity to try out their learning as well as learn new skills not necessarily taught in the classroom.
Morningstar has only had a few interns over our 28-year history, each with their own success story. Bill Mellema, our current Director of Product Management spent his internship assisting our engineering team in the final testing stages for the Sunlight, SunGuard, and a now-discontinued ProStar controller. He then stayed with us after graduating, growing alongside the company into senior engineering roles before applying his MBA, which he earned while an employee, to his current role.
After working several summers as a high schooler, Eric Helgeson officially interned after his sophomore year. He worked on the initial hardware development plan for the Ethernet MeterBus Converter™, a product that still sets the standard in our industry. Eric continued to work during several other school breaks, helping out as needed and learning as he went along until he graduated.
In the summer of 2020, Samantha Falco managed to work remotely for most of her internship. She worked primarily on our new BMS block, doing the schematic, layout, and initial testing. She also tapped into some of our testing knowledge for a school club project and has returned this summer before she starts her masters’ program.
Interns may be few, but at Morningstar, we like to match our needs with the right person who will both contribute and learn. It’s a win-win.