For most college students, summer is the most highly anticipated season of the year. For two decades of our lives we’ve been tirelessly completing problem sets, public speeches, and scientific experiments. We’ve spent hours in the library, highlighter in-hand, meticulously annotating readings, drinking enough coffee to awaken a bear in hibernation, and agonizing over midterms and finals. Yet, each year, as May comes dancing toward us like the giddy audience at Coachella, we know we have survived another year.

Summer provides an incredible opportunity to dabble in just about anything. Some choose to take their few months of freedom and travel the world, others work at the mall back home, and some take advantage of their time-off to explore potential career paths in a summer internship.

Chapman
Students take part in all three, and more. Let’s take a look at what a handful of our students will be doing this summer.

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Freshman Alika Chuck will be spending his summer continuing as the Operations Manager for Cottonwood Dairy in San Jacinto, California, while also starting a new venture working for
Transamerica Financial Advisor, Inc (TFA)
. At TFA, Alika will be working closely with a company director as he trains to become a licensed Financial Advisor. His job will consist primarily of working with the baby boomer demographic, learning how to roll over retirement funds into accounts such as, a Roth IRA. During his training process he’ll simultaneously be working to become an independent contractor for the company as well.

Chuck is highly passionate about business constantly picking his brain to find money saving hacks. His goal is to save companies revenue while capitalizing on profit gain and maximum return on investments. He’s grateful for the career opportunities he’s had at such a young age and he believes these experiences will help him pursue his desired career path. The sophomore hopes to work for one of the
Big Four accounting firms
eventually rising to the position of CFO for a Fortune 500 company. He attributes his strong professionalism in part to his experiences at Chapman. Chuck is a member of
Chapman’s Accounting Society
and is also involved with
Alpha Kappa Psi
, Chapman’s professional business fraternity. These organizations have helped him expand his professional network and gain valuable skills applicable to his desired career.

One of Chuck’s fraternity brothers in Alpha Kappa Psi also has impressive summer plans. Sophomore Joe Covarrubias
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will be working as an Executive Intern with
Target
this summer. His job will consist of everything from retail to store display and formatting, security, to inventory management; essentially, Covarrubias is responsible for regulating every work process in the store. He described his duties as, “I’ll learn to open and close the store and everything in between.” He’ll work closely with a Target store’s Executive Team Leader to strengthen his project management and leadership skills while simultaneously helping the company by effectively executing tasks. The objective of the program is for interns to become strategic business partners for the store, potentially becoming store managers upon graduation. Covarrubias will rotate through a three-part program learning Target Fundamentals, Basic Leadership, and Hands-on Special Project.

Covarrubias attributes his success thus far in part to the abundance of resources at Chapman University. He’s worked closely with the
Career Development Center (CDC)
gaining valuable insight from the experience and knowledge from their staff. He also believes that his Introduction to Management course and Production Operations class helped him obtain the necessary skill set to feel confident tackling his position with Target.

Another student holding a position within a well-established company this summer is junior Sorelle Hardin. Hardin will be spending a majority of her summer working at
Nordstrom
in Tacoma, Washington as a sales representative for the women’s shoe department. She will be focusing on developing her retail and customer service skills.

Hardin was drawn to this position because of her passion for fashion and high quality merchandise. She aspires to one day work in Nordstrom’s corporate office in downtown Seattle. Her desired career trajectory is to work her way up from her current position, to assistant manager, to store manager, and eventually make her way to a corporate position in the Marketing or Human Resources Department.

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As a
Strategic and Corporate Communication major
at Chapman, Hardin has learned a great deal about the power of effective communication, specifically in a business setting. The classes she found most applicable to her future career goals were her Message Design courses, the class Training and Consulting in the Corporate Context, and her leadership courses. These classes helped her learn about the corporate environment and how to effectively design, present, and deliver company messages and marketing campaigns.

Chapman students are up to incredible things this summer. Students have secured internships in major U.S. cities, solidified travel plans around the globe, and more.

Do you have exciting summer plans? Share them with us!