SOURCE Magazine Fall 2021 October/November 2021 | Page 17

through the GROWMARK Summer intern program ,” said Roling . “ One of them suggested it would be great for them to have peers to interact with and work on projects together .” Roling worked with Tobias and received additional support and funding from the Winning Innovations group at GROWMARK to establish an Innovation Intern cohort .
This summer Roling hired six interns from ISU ’ s Department of Technology who worked together on several key innovation and IT projects with direct impact to the System . Four interns worked on a web support app to speed up the customer support process and enhance the customer experience . The other two worked on a data ingestion system to enable existing System data to be used for future sales forecasts . Innovation Intern Ryane Brady , said , “ having a group of interns all working together really sped up the learning process . Each person brought a unique expertise to the team and we were able to learn from one another and bounce ideas off of each other .” The Innovation Internship has been a very positive experience for Brady , who is a recent ISU grad . “ The best part of the internship with GROWMARK is that I really got exposure to the technology and how it works in a business setting . That is invaluable as a student . The learning is a lot more meaningful and rewarding when you ’ ve invested your time in a real , impactful outcome .”
The feedback on the work product of the Innovation Intern Cohort has been great . “ The business units like that the interns are able to get something started quickly and also that they bring fresh ideas to legacy technologies ,” said Roling . “ We would love to ramp this up to two teams which would enable us to be more agile and make an even bigger impact for the business more quickly .” Roling is also working with ISU to develop curriculum that would better prepare technology students for the type of work and projects they can expect to encounter in the “ real world .”
more of .” GROWMARK expects to make the Innovation Intern Cohort an ongoing process ; Tobias and Roling are currently recruiting for members of the fall 2021 / winter 2022 cohort .
Tobias concluded , “ We continue to get more requests from FS companies and GROWMARK business units for interns who can work with innovation , technology , data analytics , and process improvement .”
The demand for interns , and the value they bring to the GROWMARK System , shows no sign of slowing down . The GROWMARK University Relations team had more intern requests for the coming year than ever before . It appears that innovation and interns actually go together quite well .
Gabrielle Henrichs , an intern at GROWMARK FS – MidAtlantic
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Gabrielle Henrichs , an intern at GROWMARK FS – MidAtlantic
Noah Kopplin , an intern at Total Grain Marketing
Roling ’ s biggest takeaway from the first Innovation Intern Cohort was , “ we have really great talent right here in our backyard at ISU . Those students can learn very quickly and they really excel at the innovative projects we want to do
GROWMARK Innovation Interns review a project together