Student Internships:

• Departmental Guidelines for Internships [1]
• Recent ACFI Student Internships [2]

Learn about Careers in

• Accounting [3]
• Finance [4]

Departmental Guidelines for Internships

The Accounting and Finance Department encourages its students to take a rich array of advanced elective courses that will provide them with deep conceptual knowledge and broad analytical skills for their professional careers. The department will offer an ample mixture of those advanced courses from which its students can develop a concentration in accounting and finance, and it will recommend other departments' courses that are germane to accounting and finance.

Also, the department recognizes that occasional opportunities may arise in which a student can acquire certain professional skills outside of the classroom by interning in a business or other type of organization. In those cases where unique learning experiences are clearly possible, the department faculty will sponsor internships in the department's internship courses, subject to the following guidelines:

1. A maximum of four internship credits will be allowed under the internship courses ACFI 750 or ACFI 751.

2. A formal paper on a subject chosen by the faculty sponsor will be required in all accounting or finance internships. This paper should demonstrate the professional skills and other learning that the student has achieved in the internship. Other requirements are at the discretion of the faculty sponsor.

3. A written evaluation of each intern by the sponsoring business or other organization will be required at the end of the internship.

4. Registration in an accounting or finance internship course must be approved by the faculty sponsor and the department chair during the preregistration period of the semester involved.

5. A minimum ccumulative grade point average of at least 3.00 is required to be eligible for an internship in accounting or finance.

6. Also, students applying for an internship in accounting must have achieved minimum grades of B in ACFI 502: Financial Accounting and in ACFI 503: Managerial Accounting.

7. Further, students applying for an internship in finance must have achieved a minimum grade of B in ACFI 601: Financial Management.

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Chris Doran – Portfolio Management Intern
Employer: Salomon Smith Barney, A full service brokerage company located in Portsmouth, NH. Duration: 5 months, Hrs/Week: 20 – 25, Paid/Unpaid: Unpaid; Credit
Financial Consultants: Hugh Jencks and Sheila McDonough

My internship at Smith Barney had 2 distinctive parts, organization development and implementation of a new tracking system, and analysis and picking of new stocks. My responsibilities included updating and maintaining client portfolios, monitoring of all positions in managed accounts, and the analysis and recommendation of new ideas. My first job was to create a system that would allow my managers to more easily and effectively monitor and track positions in client’s portfolios. After creating this system, I then had to troubleshoot and work out all programming problems. After implementation, I then learned more about the financial markets and how to pick stocks based on a wealth of technical and fundamental information. My last objective was to come up with buy recommendations for the partners to replace positions currently not working.

Comments: The amount of knowledge I learned at Smith Barney over the five-month period is priceless. Although the internship was for credit and not paid, the experience of working with real brokers is something you can’t learn in classes. It was challenging in the respect that there is so much to learn, and not a lot of time to learn it in, and the expectations for the internship were high. I highly recommend this internship to anyone thinking about a brokerage career.

-Chris Doran
-Sr. Business Administration, concentration in Finance

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Orsi Farkas
Employer: Westaim Biomedical Inc., a biomedical company selling and marketing burn wound dressings, Exeter, NH.
Duration: 3 months; Hours: 40 hours/week; Paid/Unpaid: Paid

I started out the summer by working with the marketing department on the creation of the company’s web site. My duties included collecting product and company information as well as scientific data. Working closely with the IT consultant creating the web page, I organized the information into the format it would appear in on the web site. My next task was the development of a competitive intelligence database. I was responsible for designing a database that would satisfy the needs of the finance, product development, marketing and sales departments. After the database became operational, I populated it with information obtained from Internet resources, SEC filings and published reports. My final project was to assist in the creation of the 3rd and 4th quarter forecasts, as well as the 3-year outlook for the company. We compared the forecast amounts to the budget and analyzed the variances, trying to find their source.

In addition to the projects above, I had a chance to work on several smaller ones, such as: patent amortization, transfer pricing, balance sheet reconciliation and headcount reports.

Comments: I found the internship to be very challenging and rewarding. The most beneficial aspect of the internship was being exposed to several different areas of business. I learned about finance, marketing, accounting, logistics and customer service. Also, I had a chance to do meaningful work, gaining valuable experience that will help me in the future.

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Kara Beinkampen

As an accounting intern at the Richie McFarland Children’s Center in Stratham, I am learning a lot about accounting procedures within a small, non-profit, community-based business setting. The RMCC offers early identification and treatment of developmental problems for young children and support for their families. Supervised by accountant Val Harrington, I am responsible for making daily deposits to two cash accounts and using QuickBooks accounting software to make batch payroll journal entries twice each month. Among other things, I will also be working on insurance denials and bank reconciliations. Through this internship I am gaining valuable hands-on experience that I believe will be useful in any business-related career that I may someday choose.

-Kara Beinkampen
Jr. Business Administration Major

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Rob Merklinger

Starting September 8, 1999, I will begin an internship at Solomon Smith & Barney that requires the intern to gain class credits since it is a non-paying internship. The internship revolves around a managed fund of stocks for 40 clients at Solomon Smith & Barney. My responsibilities there will be to research new stocks and also track the existing ones. I will be working their Monday afternoons and Wednesday for a total of 10 hours a week.

Professor Fred Kaen has agreed to be my mentor for the independent study on the basis that I complete a term paper at the end of the Internship, which ends in December. The paper will discuss the investment strategies being used for the managed fund account and then compare its progress to the Standard & Poor 500. Professor Kaen and I will meet once every two weeks to discuss my research for the paper

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Udit Chhibar

I felt that my internship over the summer with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter enhanced my learning process. It brought together knowledge from the classroom and the real working world and how it was all related. In addition to performing
administrative tasks, I analyzed client portfolios and performed research on stocks and mutual funds. There are some definite bonuses to doing an internship, they give you real world experience and an insight to how things are really done in the business world, but it also provides you with information and knowledge that you can't get from the classroom. The internship has help guide my career path and helped develop my goals further.