Illinois Tollway Internships Provide Opportunities for Students to Gain Real-World Work Experiences
2024-06-28
The Illinois Tollway continues to nurture the next generation of engineers and transportation industry professionals through its internship program.
“As part of our efforts to build a pipeline of future leaders, we are providing our interns with opportunities to gain practical, hands-on experience by applying their academic skills to ongoing programs, projects and initiatives,” said Illinois Tollway Executive Director Cassaundra Rouse. “Our interns are working in collaboration with some of the most knowledgeable professionals in the transportation industry, who mentor and guide students to acquire valuable workplace experiences that will help further their careers.”
Interns also participate in a range of interactive activities aimed at fostering long-lasting relationships with their peers and mentors.
The Illinois Tollway 2024 internship program includes 31 interns representing 20 different colleges and universities in seven states, including Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri and North Carolina. This year marks the highest number of interns ever participating in the Tollway’s internship program.
Most of the interns are participating in the Tollway’s 10-week summer Professional Services Internship Program, which provides interns with hands-on experience working daily in one of 12 different departments, including Administration, Business Systems, Executive Office, Facilities and Fleet, Finance, Information Technology, Internal Audit, Office of the Inspector General, Operations, Planning, Security and Safety and Stakeholder Engagement.
Two interns are participating in the year-long Engineering Cooperative Educational Program, which offers in-depth instruction on the three phases of a project – planning, design and construction. Another intern is in the one-year Business Systems internship, diving into transportation and public policy data projects.
The Tollway’s paid internship programs started on June 3. The summer internship ends on August 9, while the Engineering Co-Op and Business Systems internships run through May 2025.
“This year, we’re focused on helping interns build relationships with their peers and mentors so they feel more comfortable working in this environment and make what we hope will become enduring connections,” said Illinois Tollway Pipeline Partnership Liaison Jyoti Rao. “More of our activities this year are in-person rather than virtual to help cultivate those relationships.”
In-person activities include site visits to a live construction project and a Tollway maintenance facility to see the trucks and equipment routinely used for roadway maintenance and for responding to incidents.
The Tollway also provides interns enriching career opportunities through job shadowing, allowing them to follow professionals in other departments to gain a broader perspective of the agency and its daily operations. These experiences expand the interns’ understanding of how the Tollway works, as they see firsthand how the diverse roles and responsibilities of different departments fit together to forge a cohesive whole.
Other professional development opportunities include training on specific workplace behaviors and competencies such as workplace communication, conflict resolution and mapping out a career to help interns at the Tollway and beyond.