Disney internships offer chance to ‘make magic’

Each semester a select few GCSU students get the opportunity to participate in the Disney College Program, a semester-long internship with the Walt Disney Company.

Open to all majors at GCSU, the paid internship opportunity provides students with the experience of living in a diverse environment with students from all over the world, learning through classes offered, and earning money while working as a cast member. Each role enables students to learn transferable skills vital for the future and the ability to take their career goals to the next level.

Senior marketing major Cameron Steele, who completed his Disney internship in Spring 2009, gained a lot from his experience.

“I have a list of contacts I can use now in the future,” Steele said. “I’ve learned what it’s like to work for a Fortune 500 company. Working for a company that is as big as Disney is something few people get to experience, and especially working in a location where 40 percent of our sales were of merchandise sales that came from our store.”

Dr. Jan Flynn, associate professor for the Department of Management and GCSU liaison with Disney, is in charge of assisting students to determine their academic status and discover which credit opportunities from the Disney College Program are applicable to their specific degree.

According to Flynn, this is the seventh year that GCSU has been working with the program.

“We will have somewhere between eight and 10 students a semester down there. So I would say we have had, over the course of our experience, somewhere between 75 and 100 students down there over the last seven years,” Flynn said.

According to Wayne Hampton, a recruiter for the program, the internship periods are either five months or seven months in length. The fall program begins in May or August and lasts until January, and the spring program starts in January and lasts until either May or August.

Not only is the experience usually unforgettable, but afterward students can proudly put on their résumé that they worked for Disney. Students can “get their foot in the door” especially with the chance to network with top Disney executives along the way.

“The college program experience is what you, as a student, make it,” Flynn said. “If there are parts of the company that you’re interested in and you tell them you’re a Disney College Program participant most people will say, ‘come on over and spend the day, and let me talk to you about what I do.’ So the ability to network, and the ability to shadow and the ability to learn about the Disney organization is something that is not available to other people. There’s more than just doing the job, it’s everything else that goes around it that’s part of the experience.”

Disney sets high expectations for students who are accepted into the program.Participants will typically be scheduled between 30 and 45 hours per week, and must be flexible and open to a full-time work schedule.

Besides the work aspect, the program offers collegiate classes so that students can earn college credit. Typically, students going for the seven-month program can earn credit for three academic classes and a three-hour internship credit.

“A lot of people don’t get the chance to travel, to go to other countries, to, you know, really see what the world is really like. At Disney you get to meet people with different points of views, with different cultural ideas, so it’s like instead of going out into the world, the world is actually coming to you.” Steele said.

Most GCSU students who take part in the program come away from it feeling good about the experience.

“You get to help make magic happen,” said Corinne Burstein, a senior who participated in the program in Spring 2009. “Every day you go to work happy. You can’t complain about that. You’re going to work at Disney world, so really it was just an awesome experience and I would tell anyone to (apply).”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Mar 5 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry