2025 ITS Summer Internship

For the second year, the Information Technology Services (ITS) Summer Internship program offered students a valuable opportunity to learn and contribute to our campus community. From May 27 to August 1, the ten-week program introduced eight students to a variety of ITS services and projects.

The interns balanced a full schedule, working with one ITS team in the morning and one in the afternoon. This year’s projects included: classroom technology instruction, CRM (Salesforce) development, data integration, Moodle instructional design, a campus video recording location guide, change management, Smith Computer Store marketing, and IT compliance & security.

Throughout the summer, interns received support from their supervisors and were also paired with ITS mentors. In addition, they attended weekly Lunch and Learn sessions where ITS leaders presented on topics like graphic design, cybersecurity, and technical writing.

ITS Change Management interns Caitlyn and Melissa interviewed two of their peers about their summer working with ITS.

2025 ITS Intern: Amaya Cano

Amaya Cano '26 (she/her) is a Biological Sciences and Statistical & Data Sciences double major.

Amaya discovered the ITS internship program through a flyer in Seelye Hall. During her interview with Travis Grandy (Associate Director, Learning, Research, and Technology, and internship program coordinator), his clear passion for IT convinced her this was the welcoming environment she wanted.

As part of the IT Compliance and Security project, she drafted a Payment Card Industry (PCI) policy for Smith. This policy would establish security standards for handling customer card information and reducing the risk of data breaches. Using Hack the Box, she gained exposure to cybersecurity—from incident response to encryption methods—learning how an IT team keeps a campus safe. She credits this project with improving her technical writing skills, which she can apply to reports she expects to write as part of her major-related coursework.

As part of the Computer Store 2026 Marketing project, Amaya helped to publicize Smith’s Computer Store. She was surprised to hear how few Smithies knew about it, especially their student discounts! Working with the Accessibility Resource Center (ARC) and the Admissions team, she created promotional materials highlighting accessible educational technology (e.g., text-to-speech tools) to help people with disabilities succeed. This project taught her that marketing is crucial to making people care about your work, whether the work is about microscopic amoebas or the Computer Store.

One of her most fun experiences during this internship was befriending fellow interns—bonding over project discussions and downtown drink runs. Another highlight was the Wednesday Lunch and Learn Sessions, which showed her the diversity of IT jobs available and everyone's passion for their work.

Her key takeaway from Smith’s ITS team is that IT has a low barrier to entry. People are often supportive, training resources are accessible, and the field offers countless paths—from cybersecurity to marketing—that can shape you into a multidisciplinary scholar.

2025 ITS Intern: Shahrin Alfi

Shahrin is passionate about using her tech skills to create accessibility in the communities around her, so when she learned about the ITS Internship at a Lazarus Center Career fair, she knew it was the perfect opportunity for her.

Shahrin worked with the Data Integration team to ensure that various software used by Smith departments work effectively together. Her project involved resolving an issue where updates to events in 25Live, an event scheduling software, were generating new tickets instead of updating existing ones, leading to confusion and difficulty in handling events effectively. Along with a fellow intern, she investigated the root cause and leveraged other platforms to streamline and improve the ticketing workflow.

She also worked with the Moodle Redesign team to support professors in making their Moodle courses more accessible to students. She noted that working with professors in this capacity has been valuable for providing impactful support that will benefit both faculty and students.

Shahrin Alfi '28 (she/her) is an intended computer science and data sciences double major.

Shahrin’s highlight for this summer was seeing her data integration work come to action. She felt immensely proud of how much she achieved and learned, considering that she initially had faced difficulty adjusting to the platforms used by the data integration team.

Prior to this summer, Shahrin had reservations about pursuing computer science due to concerns about artificial intelligence. Now, she feels more strongly about pursuing the software development and/or cybersecurity fields and continuing the work that she did while interning with ITS. Shahrin noted that the ten weeks she spent interning with ITS were rather fast but insightful beyond her expectations. She was surprised to find out how often the ITS team assesses how students would benefit from a specific idea; this reinforced the fact that everything that the ITS team does is essentially for the students and the Smith community at large.

About the Authors

Caitlyn Kim '28 (she/her) is a Computer Science major. As an ITS intern, she worked on the ITS Website Redesign and IT Compliance and Security projects. Her most memorable experiences were building friendships with fellow interns and ITS teams!

Melissa Kabalisa '28 (she/they) is a computer science major and data science minor in her second year at Smith College. While interning with ITS, they worked on the Change Management team's ITS Website Redesign project and instructional videos for the Classroom Technology team.

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