Stories

The school year is winding down, but Santa Clara students aren’t going on vacation. They’re just getting started. 

Isabela Figueira ’18 enjoyed computer engineering. She liked coding. Running functions was fun. The math was pretty cool. But as a junior, she was still figuring out what a career in engineering would look like. 

This time last year, Figueira headed to Clemson, S.C. to work on an NSF funded research project on machine learning and computer animation. She’d learned about machine learning at SCU and wanted to explore it more, so she applied for the program.

That’s when everything she’d learned at SCU started to turn into a career. She loved the research. This looked like a job, but it didn’t feel like work.

This the power of summer internships and research programs. Figueira stepped outside her traditional environment and found a new application for her skills that she could explore back at school. Now she’ll start her Ph.D. in the Fall (read more!).

And Figueira isn’t alone. Like Andrew Torrance ’19, who showed that internships aren’t about getting the boss’s coffee. Last year, Torrance helped the folks at Intuitive Surgical improve their staple lubrication automation process.

Lauren Kinerk ’19 showed what you can do when you get your foot in the door. The Accelerated Cooperative Education (ACE) Leadership Program at SCU helped her prepare her application for an Apple internship, but she did the rest. She will be working in store visuals in the finance development program in the new Apple Park campus this summer.

Head Coach Cam Rast and the Santa Clara men’s soccer team will be traveling to Denmark this summer to participate in exhibition matches, see the country, and even do a little recruiting. Not a bad idea. The Broncos have good luck recruiting talent from Denmark—senior starter Valdemar Andersen ’18 hails from Aarhus, Denmark.

And there are plenty more. Cross country and track runner Jean Baptiste-Tooley ’18 is going to Ghana with Global Social Benefit Fellowship. Shadi Kaileh J.D. ’20 will be a legal affairs intern for the Charlotte Hornets of the NBA. Garrett Garcia J.D. ’20 will be a legal patent intern for Samsung. Kaity Gahrmann ’19 will intern at Vera Wang.

So while the school year is winding down, Santa Clara students aren’t going on vacation. They’re just getting started. Stay tuned.