Turning CBL Experience into an Internship - Interview with Corrie Persson
![]() Published: April 5, 2019 Corrie Persson is a communication major at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Last fall, she took Integrated Marketing Communication, a community-based learning course that partnered with Focus on Community to organize a community-wide fundraiser. After her experience in the course, she was offered the amazing opportunity to work with Focus on Community as a media intern. The experience was not without challenges. One of the biggest challenges was working to meet the deadlines of the event and ensuring that all the donations were collected on time. “We were getting donations up until the week before the event. Sometimes it was hard to plan around that.” However, Corrie doesn’t view this as a negative challenge. The donations received in the week before the event were an important part of making Focus Food Fest successful, and in the end the class raised over $2500 for Focus on Community. When Corrie learned that only one student would be given the opportunity to intern with Focus on Community, she knew she wanted to be chosen for the opportunity. “They work with the prevention of substance abuse, working with teens primarily. That was something I was really passionate about. I had to learn how to sell myself.” It’s not always easy to talk about your best qualities, and this was one of the things that Corrie learned in her CBL course, as well as how to build a better resume. Corrie’s hard work paid off at the end of the semester when she was chosen as the student intern for Focus on Community. The experience of being an intern can be incredibly rewarding. At her internship, Corrie was given the opportunity to learn about grant-writing, something she is interested in pursuing professionally. “It's a pretty big deal to do grant-writing so it’s not like they’re going to throw me in and have me write a grant for them, but to be able to edit it and see what goes into it is really good experience. There's no way I would get that [experience] in a class. There's only so much you can teach about a grant-writing process.” Corrie also has many opportunities to use the skills she learned in her communication classes at her internship. As the media intern, she works on the Facebook and Instagram pages for Focus on Community, as well as creating content for their website. “Learning how to write professionally even just on their social media and website is a good marriage between my major and career goals.” |