Summer intern program a first for JMU, Ellucian

As a member of the first cohort-based X-Labs Reimagined Internship, when Hamid Elias (’24) interviewed for a summer position at Ellucian, he asked how he and his team might define success.

Their answer? Create a product by students, for students, that has value for both students and institutions.

With the help of JMU X-Labs, “We were able to go from really nothing in a classroom to an actual product,” Elias said. “I think that was the most successful point.”

That experience — building something from nothing — also succeeded in landing Elias his first post-graduate job. 

Elias, 23, a May graduate who majored in Economics and minored in Computer Information Systems, started working for Ellucian, in Reston, Virginia, earlier this month as an associate product manager.

“More cohorts like this should exist. Other schools should do it. Other companies should do it with schools like JMU, departments like X-Labs.And this should not be a [one-time] thing; this should be a much bigger thing … because you can see the success that’s already happened here.”

— Hamid Elias (’24), associate product manager at Ellucian

The cohort-style internship was a first for JMU and Ellucian. The pilot program started with an X-Labs class in Spring 2024 that prepared students for the work they would do over the summer. 

Through the partnership, instructors built a course curriculum and offered a problem statement for interns to solve. Ellucian assisted in teaching the class, and — after the spring semester — had nine students intern as a team and continue to build upon the work they started in the classroom.

Besides offering students practical industry experience and helping Ellucian address key goals, the internship resulted in requests for three students to return for another internship at Ellucian next summer. 

For Computer Science major Alex Furlich, the internship inspired him to rethink his career goals and swap out one of his three academic minors for Communication Studies.

“I think this process really made me feel ownership over the work I was doing and how I engaged with learning,” Furlich said. “It felt a little freeing almost, to be in an internship like this. I also think if you’re stressed about going in and doing an internship cold turkey, this is a little nice. You get your introduction, you walk into that internship full-time, knowing people, having done some of the work already.”

Furlich, now a 20-year-old junior, initially served as the team ethicist, but about six weeks into the class, he switched to storyteller. He said his background as co-captain of the JMU Speech Team, combined with other communication skills his mentors and classmates noticed, encouraged them to recommend he fill that role for the team.

“Because this was a very flexible internship, I also ended up taking on researching accessibility techniques in coding and checking our website that was in development to make sure that it was meeting accessibility standards,” Furlich said. “[With] the combined manpower, we were able to make so much cool technology. ... It wasn’t something I think you’d be able to accomplish if you’re working in a normal internship position.”

Furlich said he plans to keep Disability Studies and Sociology as his other two minors. “I really love the communications role,” he said.

Bonnie Pohland, a 22-year-old senior, also developed new interests during the internship. After starting as the team storyteller, she switched roles with Furlich to become the team ethicist.

“I’m an International Affairs and Economics dual-degree student, and I never thought I’d find myself in the tech industry,” she said. “Now, with all this exposure to the different goals that exist and the different projects and missions … I’m really interested in that industry — especially as a user experience researcher, or a UX designer or a product manager. All those roles are interesting to me now, because I’ve seen what goes into them and in a very detailed way.”

When considering the internship, Pohland recalls wanting to know how new technologies affect tech companies and what kinds of jobs are available. 

“My role, for instance, was created because of the emergence of artificial intelligence,” she explained. “When they came up with the ethicist intern role, their idea was that this person would be documenting the implications of AI in any kind of software or product that we built. Along the way, we found that an ethicist is important to a product team. … It was helpful to have someone who, every step of the way, was understanding the market for this product and advising us on how to develop it and how to design it, and who could also, at a moment’s notice, present the whole thing to a higher-up.”

Her team, she said, “built software from the ground up for Ellucian that analyzes a university’s curriculum effectiveness and compares that against job-market data to understand what skills are in demand — what skills are missing from the university’s curriculum, and what would be most beneficial to students? So that whole process was exciting.”

She and Furlich, who were invited to return to Ellucian for solo internships next summer, appreciated the latitude that Ellucian gave them to craft their experiences. “We were given a lot more independence and autonomy than I thought we would be,” Pohland said. “The design course taught us to work together as a product team. … [W]e really were our own product team in a way that’s so different from other internships.”

Ellucian is a leading global higher education technology provider. The X-Labs Reimagined Internship aimed at demonstrating the potential and impact of experiential learning rooted in a skills-first approach, explained Bill Blackford, vice president of global talent management for Ellucian.

“When we think of the impact of our team, our company is only as strong as the talent it stands on,” he said. “We can have the best vision, the best strategy, but if we don’t have the right people on the ground to execute, then that plan is going to fail.”

The management team had two overarching goals for the collaboration. “One was to create a safe place for our students to learn, get out of their comfort zone, really get comfortable so they could experiment and begin building and developing skills that would ultimately enhance their career readiness,” Blackford said.

“Secondly, we were drawn to this idea of seeing the impact it would have on the outcome delivered by having a team cohort come into our program and then compare it against the historical past performance. … How does that compare against our other interns [and] other programs in years past?”

Ellucian employed 42 interns this summer, including the nine in the X-Labs cohort.

X-Labs’ mission at JMU is to fuel innovation through cross-disciplinary collaboration, said Executive Director Connie Frigo. “Innovation can include anything from the co-creation of a new product to the development of new systems, models or processes that can serve as catalysts for new discoveries,” she said. The internship promoted innovation at every level, from the software they developed to the way they collaborated and sought to benefit the workforce.

The partnership “exceeded all expectations,” Frigo said. “A stand-alone X-Labs class or traditional internship could not have produced these exceptional outcomes that will continue giving to all of us for a long time.”

Pohland said the internship was a great way for her to build on what she learned in last year’s Hacking for Diplomacy course — which provided a chance for students to work with the U.S. Department of State to help solve real-world problems. “I loved this change of being part of a team that’s really building something, and that’s what X-Labs does well,” she said.

Pohland plans to participate in the Washington Semester this spring. “I’m personally drawn to those kinds of programs because they are small and intense, and there’s a lot you can accomplish. You have to build relationships and support your team.” 

For Elias, who participated in two other internships before X-Labs Reimagined, the experience was unique because of the cohort atmosphere. “We already knew each other,” he said. “We knew what products we were going to be working on. We knew how to collaborate as a team, and that gave us a head start and gave us confidence.” 

“You know, when an intern is first starting, they don’t have a good sense of what to expect, but this program was significantly different in that we were confident, and we knew what we were jumping into. And I think that's why we had such a successful ending.”

Also grateful for his experience, Furlich appreciates the mentors and others involved in the process. “[It’s] an amazing concept, but the people who helped run it also made it what it was,” he said. “I’m just very appreciative of all the work they put in and how well they did this pilot program.”