AMERICAN RED CROSS
Devansh Patel

A student majoring in computer science and business at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, Devansh Patel also attended Middlesex Community College. In the past, Devansh worked as a computer tutor and at Sears, Lawrence General Hospital, Famous Footware, Best Buy, and Market Basket. He won DECA’s second place in retail marketing and belonged to the 600/700 SAT Club (for students who earned  600+ on math section of SAT. Devansh knows programming in Visual Basic and speaks Gujarati. He visited India in both 1997 and 2006. Devansh applied to the Washington Internship Program on March 12, 2006 in search of a summer internship in information technology, and within a month WIP placed him in the IT Department at the American Red Cross where he worked from early June through August. Devansh lived at Summit Hills, a complex run by the Washington Internship Program, where WIP placed this young man of Indian heritage with roommate Lokesh Todi from Nepal (who attended Colby College in Waterville, Maine and did an internship at Merrill Lynch) and suitemate Jeremy Soana who lived in Spain, France, and Asia before attending Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (and whom WIP placed at Linsco Private Ledger). Below is the paper Devansh wrote describing his internship and a picture of Devansh in his apartment with other WIP interns.

Devansh Patel (far left) with WIP interns and Summit Hills
suitemates Lokesh Todi (center) and Jeremy Soana

“I was an IT and network intern at the American Red Cross. During the summer, I worked in several ARC locations, including Silver Spring and Hyattsville, Maryland; Fairfax, Virginia; and Washington, D.C. One of my jobs was installing network and phone equipment in the offices. I personally ran wiring throughout an entire office building, and I set up a voice-over IP system by programming everything from the main control down to each individual telephone. Other assignments I was given included data entry and setting up workstations. I installed software, connected these programs to the network, and controlled the content that employees could access according to the department to which the workstation belonged.”

“The biggest job I had at the internship was during the June floods. I played a major part in setting up the ARC disaster-relief command center for the entire D.C. area. During the flooding, I had to set up fifteen workstations as quickly as possible. Each station had a laptop, monitor, mouse, keyboard, and telephone, and I had to maintain this system and answer any questions. This responsibility was a exciting and educational.”

“I recommend this internship to any student looking for networking experience. I learned a lot that I would not have understood from a book. In this hands-on internship, I was surrounded by knowledgeable people who were willing to teach but not hold my hand all the time. They let interns learn from their errors.”

Back to Sample internships main page