This year we have initiated an internship program, with has been an absolutely amazing experience. It is indeed a privilege to be working with bright, young and talented scientists of the future. The qualities they have, the way they think and the insights they bring are amongst the many benefits that we enjoy from this experience. However, we have the capability to ‘give back’ to our profession that has so richly given us such great enjoyment. Being able to train, guide, advise, support and mentor undergraduate and postgraduate students alike is something special that we certainly do not take for granted. We are committed to that, to contributing to our internship students our perspective on mindset, attitude, and professionalism such that they can more confidently enter the world of work or business more prepared.
We started off quite slowly, and committed to hosting four students between June 24 and August 16. All of these students were Monash University undergraduates. For a period of time, we had an association with our former ‘sister business’ Food Entrepreneurship Academy, where we would share projects and students. However that ceased by the end of July and we ran our own solo operation.
The first two students we hosted were Ruby Chin and Chloe Lam. Both Ruby and Chloe are Biomedical Science students. However, Ruby is in 2nd-year and Chloe is in 3rd-year. They both undertook this placement during the winter semester break (from June 24 to July 19) as part of the 2nd-year unit BME2032. Instantly they both demonstrated their commitment and high aptitude for the diversity of work we undertake at Food Microbiology Academy – scholarly research, digital marketing and campaigns for causes that we strongly advocate for in the food safety space. With their keen interest, and understanding in microbiology from undergraduate studies, both Chloe and Ruby were able to make solid contributions. Their commitment and dedication along with keenness to contribute and develop themselves, progress their understanding, not only of the technical aspects of microbiology, infectious diseases and public health, but also their professional skills made them just fabulous members of our team. Chloe and Ruby were required to undertake a minimum of 80 hours of industry placement as part of BME2032. They easily made this minimum writing blog articles, creating videos, engaging in our current scholarly research project as well as developing monetisation strategies, to name just some of what they did. In addition, Chloe took on a special project to commence migrating our blog website for WordPress.com to WordPress.org, and set up third party advertisements. This was a huge win for us and we have extreme gratitude for Chloe’s contribution in this space.
Once second semester commenced, on July 22, we hosted two Pharmaceutical Science students, for the first four weeks of semester, until August 16. Yi and Tracy were they students that joined us, enrolling in BPS3062 and needing to complete a minimum of 120 hours of placement for this internship unit. It was interesting because at first, I had some concerns over the relevance of pharmaceutical science to food microbiology, and whether these students would have a suitable background for our work and if they would find our work interesting enough of be bored by it. However, my concerns were gone early as they demonstrated interest, commitment and a relevant background showing the wide applicability and transferable nature of the pharmaceutical science degree program at Monash. They were easily able to demonstrate capacity to write technical and non-technical blog articles on key topics to further our mission.
A key and absolutely core value we hold here at Food Microbiology Academy is an absolute commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion. This is especially so in culture and ethnicity, along with gender, particularly non-binary gender diversity and women’s empowerment. Thus, Chloe and then Tracy contributed to this mission and core value by creating blog articles and videos in languages other than English. This was a major step forward for our EDI values, as we were able to offer our knowledge and understanding to people that prefer to receive such messages in Cantonese and Mandarin.
While we are certainly not a ‘standard’ workplace, we feel we are really able to offer opportunities and benefits that put us in a unique position to engage intern students in a meaningful way while contributing to their professional development. Our special blend of start-up culture, scholarly and academic research environment along with innovation plus entrepreneurship gives our students a new way of looking at the world of work, at different ways they could make money, create value, generate wealth and give back to society in a way that enables them to contribute in the way they want, fulfilling their ‘why’ in the world. If you are after a different industry experience internship experience, contact Dr Philip Button to find out how Food Microbiology Academy can benefit you, and/or our former students to see what they thought of their experience. As well, take a look at our video below, about industry experience internships with us.
Philip Button – philip.button@foodmicrobiology.academy
Chloe Lam – clam0044@student.monash.edu
Ruby Chin – zchi0036@student.monash.edu
Tracy Chen – yche0487@student.monash.edu
Yi Xu – yxuu0173@student.monash.edu
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