Messina College has partnered with Commonwealth Financial Network—a Waltham-based financial services firm—to offer 10 paid internships for its second-year students.
“As a two-year program, we wanted to be sure that our students began to envision their career paths early and could begin to connect the value of their education to workforce opportunities,” Messina College Dean Rev. Erick Berrelleza, S.J., wrote in a statement to The Heights.
The internships, which began this September and will continue through the fall semester, are designed to build students’ professional skills in a practical setting and help them explore potential career paths.
Commonwealth CEO Wayne Bloom and his wife, Veronica Bloom, are Boston College parents and former co-chairs of the Parents Leadership Council. When Berrelleza met with the couple to propose the partnership, they were all ears, he said.
“I had the opportunity to meet them early on and share with them about the mission of Messina College to serve students who are the first in their families to attend college and provide them with a specially tailored program to support student success,” Berrelleza wrote. “As recruitment for Messina’s internship program began, Mr. Bloom responded enthusiastically, calling together several members from his team and working with his managers across different functional areas to provide 10 paid Messina internships.”
These functional areas include investment management and research, practice management, enterprise risk management, data and analytics, and human resources. Interns will work between 10 and 12 hours a week in the functional area they were selected for based on interviews conducted last spring, according to a May press release.
“We want these interns to leave feeling they were never treated as ‘just students,’” Bloom said in the release. “From day one, they’ll contribute to meaningful projects that impact our Advisor community.”
The partnership is part of Messina’s broader internship program, intended to prepare its first-generation students for professional success. In the program’s first year, the college has around 30 partners in the Greater Boston area, including Liberty Mutual Insurance, Boston Public Schools, and Mass General Brigham, according to Berrelleza.
“We anticipate adding partners to the group and being able to provide even more options for our students in the coming years,” Berrelleza wrote.
Students also enroll in a required, three-credit seminar course, which aims to help them connect their internship experience with their academic and career goals.
Berelleza said he hopes the internship opportunities offer more than just career skills. Many Messina students already have work experience, so the goal of their internships is to find a career that speaks to them while gaining experience working in a corporate setting, he added.
“Most of our students have jobs already, and they continue to work to support themselves and their families as they navigate college, but a lot of them only have a general idea of what corporate offices might be like,” Berrelleza wrote.
Berrelleza emphasized that Messina partnered with area companies that focus on recruiting local talent to ensure students can showcase their skills and see the impact of their work.
“I think that access to new professional networks is certainly a benefit of this program, but it is also importantly about enabling our students to see their place in these organizations and the value they add to them,” Berrelleza wrote.
Berrelleza thanked the leaders who partnered with Messina to launch the internships, emphasizing how their commitment to the program has encouraged other organizations to partner with Messina.
“Their example is inspiring other organizations to work with us and for that we are grateful,” Berrelleza wrote.
