While the summer norm for most undergraduate students may be to relax at home or hit the beach everyday with friends, several Chapman business students are gaining incredible work experiences at different start-up companies from here in Orange County to all the way in Central Europe.

Motivated sophomore Brenner Spear, a double major in Business and Computer Information Systems, is enjoying a paid internship with OpenSesame.com in Portland, OR.  OpenSesame is a marketplace for buying and selling eLearning courses. He has been given the responsibility of contacting various companies that have eLearning courses and introducing them to OpenSesame, while also performing Search Engine Optimization for the company’s website by writing unique content for many of their pages.

Brenner is glad and thinks that his internship is fulfilling.  “I hear lots of kids talk about how little they actually do at their internship, or how bored they are, but luckily that’s not how it’s been. The work we do can actually be measured by quantitative values, like how many courses we’ve gotten from new sellers, how much traffic our blog posts have driven, or if our organic visits (visits from Google search pages) have gone up, week over week. It’s a lot easier to do work when you can see the impact it’s having on the company.”

Sophomore Hunter Stutsman is working with friends on startup service UniversityNest.com, a free classifieds page for Chapman students focusing on building a community of students.  As the VP of Community Expansion, Real Estate, he contacts Real Estate and management companies in the area to make them aware of their site and offering them free advertising space, which gives students the opportunity to find available off-campus housing.

“My experience has been great,” says Hunter. “I work with my friends on getting a business going that I feel passionate about.  Also, I am gaining valuable experience in how to start a company, network, make a sale, and draw a crowd.”

While Hunter’s business is focused on the Chapman community here in Orange, junior Roeder Fletcher, a double major in Business and Computer Information Systems is all the way in Geneva, Switzerland working for Business & Decision Switzerland, a Consulting Systems Integration company. As a Web Development Project Manager, Roeder interacts with French, English and German department managers to develop a website that reflects the company’s offerings, while also in charge of the SEO strategy (a focal point for the company’s digital marketing strategy) and the usability and functionality of the site, which includes monitoring key analytic metrics and designing experiments to enhance the customers experience and increase site usage.

“My experience has been very positive,” says Roeder.  “Everyone in the company was very welcoming. An interesting experience has definitely been dealing with French as the primary language spoken in the office. Luckily, most of my coworkers’ English is a lot better than my French!”

Aside from the responsibilities of their internships, these hardworking Panthers have also been able to find time to enjoy themselves. Brenner has been visiting with Chapman friends around the West Coast and will also be in London over the next few weeks for the Olympics. Hunter is kicking it into high gear – taking classes and also working another internship for a marketing firm in Bellevue with clients such as Microsoft, Ford and GoDaddy.com.  Roeder has been able to travel around Europe, and have enjoyed adventures like paragliding through the alps!

Chapman Undergrads – how is your summer going so far?  Drop us a note in the comments!

-Jared Moriarty