ODU internships boost student success, employer ties

As a creative writing major at Old Dominion University, Kayla Boney says she knows jobs in her field after graduation may be “one in a million.”

An internship with Teens with a Purpose, a Norfolk-based youth creative arts nonprofit, showed Boney, a 20-year-old rising junior, that her pursuits in the humanities, while challenging, can result in meaningful — and paid — work.

Boney, a Norfolk native and an aspiring screenwriter, volunteered with the organization while attending high school. But it was through an on-campus encounter with representatives from ODU’s Monarch Humanities Internship Academy, part of the university’s Monarch Internships and Co-Op Office founded in 2023, that she learned she could be paid and also earn academic credits to intern there.

President Brian Hemphill, who has led ODU since 2021, says the idea to launch an office solely dedicated to connecting students to internships or other work-based learning opportunities came from conversations with business leaders in the community during his first year on the job.

“I would come back to campus and have that realization … [that] we don’t have the infrastructure right now as it stands,” he says. “We didn’t have the infrastructure to spin up quickly and address some of those concerns and needs that they have, and that’s why we launched this particular operation and made the investment.”

Boney spent two semesters interning with Teens with a Purpose, helping with school-based workshops and using her creative writing skills to help write and edit the organization’s annual anthology.

She also helped prepare local teens with their submissions to the Hampton Roads Youth Poet Laureate program, which the nonprofit helps run. In return, Boney says she felt the positive impacts the program makes in her community and also learned that writing and editing can be in-demand skills.

“There’s not one place, one big place, that doesn’t have some type of editor or writer,” says Boney, who is again working with the organization this summer. “Always writing and editing and helping young people kind of make their pieces better, it has taught me a lot of fundamental skills I never would have thought I would have learned anywhere else, and it just made it more fun.”

Boney is one of about 2,500 students that ODU has tracked through its Monarch Internships and Co-op Office. Launched in 2023, the office is building on an ODU goal to have each of its approximate 24,000 students, including more than 17,000 undergraduates, complete one internship, work-based learning program or co-op experience by 2027.

Nearly 70% of graduating seniors in 2024 reported having an internship, up from 61% the year prior, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Of those interns, 59% reported being paid for their work. Those who are compensated fare better than those who are unpaid. According to NACE, paid interns received a starting salary of more than $68,000, up from a little more than $53,000 for those that were unpaid.

Further, one out of every two interns in the 2022-23 academic year accepted full-time employment from their placement, according to NACE.

“Employers, students, faculty, they realize that when you host an intern during their degree program, then you’ve got first shot at great talent,” says Barbara Blake, who has led ODU’s internships office since its inception.

Hemphill says ODU’s internships office is the first of its kind in the state, and the university has convened two meetings with business and industry leaders and faculty stakeholders, including one that drew Gov. Glenn Youngkin as a speaker, as it looks to address gaps in industries including health care, engineering, data sciences and more.

“There’s so many different gaps that we have that we want to look at how we are helping to meet that need and fill that void,” Hemphill says. “We have a duty. We have a responsibility to look at how we are working with our partners in business and industry to help them be successful, and they cannot do that without a strong workforce and we have a duty to help them address those challenges.”

To address regional employer needs and keep ODU moving forward in the digital age, the university launched the School of Data Science and the School of Supply Chain, Logistics and Maritime Operations in 2023. The university has also added certificates centered around the growing field of artificial intelligence, including in cyber defense, supply chain and logistics, and health care. It’s also seeking to expand research across the institution, including in AI, health care, maritime, cybersecurity, data science and coastal resiliency, each of which are ODU strongholds. The university recently provided $500,000 in seed funding for seven AI-related research projects, Hemphill adds.

“A lot of our focus has been around applied research, because we know applied research can truly impact our region and the nation and so we’re excited about the opportunity that we have in that space,” he says.

ODU received R1 research designation for the first time in 2022, placing it among the nation’s elite research universities, and reaffirmed that classification this year.

The university, which has an operating budget of about $980 million, spends about $100 million on research annually, Hemphill says. And like every other university, it is watching closely the impact of the Trump administration’s cuts to federal research grants, including those previously approved.

Old Dominion has seen about  $10.7 million in lost federal funding, including $6.5 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. “We have to be intentional about making sure that we’re positioning ourselves to move forward and continue to focus in on the areas that we have the ability to grow our research,” Hemphill says.

Meanwhile, the president has been busy integrating the formerly independent Eastern Virginia Medical School under the university’s new Macon and Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences umbrella.

Following the 2024 merger, the Brock hub includes five schools and colleges, comprising more than 50 academic majors, to form the largest health sciences program in the state. It also includes ODU’s partnership with Norfolk State University to form the Joint School of Public Health, which Hemphill says will better position the region to address health disparities among residents.

“We’re comfortable being the largest health sciences operation in the commonwealth, but we aren’t going to just stand there in that comfort. We’re going to look at how we grow to meet some of the nursing shortages and look at some of the physician assistants’ shortages and so on that we have,” he says. “That was a key area of focus for us.”

In April, ODU broke ground on a $184 million biological sciences building, which includes labs, a 120-seat lecture hall, an orchid conservatory, classrooms and other facilities and represents the university’s largest capital construction project to date. It’s expected to be completed in spring 2028.

Also this summer, ODU is launching a $30 million, three-year initiative to upgrade about 180 classrooms with new technologies, including augmented and virtual reality, to bring immersive learning opportunities to campus. Hemphill sees digital transformation, not only for students learning in person but for the university’s approximate 8,000 online learners, as necessary for ODU and its students’ success. Currently, students can’t register for classes and see advisers via their cell phones, he adds.

“When you think about this new digital age and the impact that AI is having on the world,” Hemphill says, “we have a duty and a responsibility to position students to be successful, and we’re doing that.”

Since launching the internships office, Blake has led a team of faculty to build a central database through which ODU will track internships and other work-based learning opportunities. This means moving from a siloed system for students in certain majors to centralized tracking. Blake says she expects that infrastructure to roll out in time for the fall 2025 semester.

While the goal of the office is to help students land an internship or experience that can lead to valuable full-time employment after graduation, it is also emerging as an important economic development tool for Hampton Roads, a region that is already working hard to attract and retain top talent. Blake says her office has worked with at least 700 businesses — from Fortune 500 corporations to mom-and-pop operations — to build a “one-stop shop” to link interns with employers, including helping some employers that don’t have money to pay an intern to find grants to do so.

In the old days, interns often worked for free, and that served as a gatekeeper for less affluent students who needed summer and after-school jobs to make ends meet. To help students get experience in their fields, no matter their financial background, ODU and many other universities have applied for and won funding to subsidize paid internships with participating workplaces.

In 2024, The Mellon Foundation announced a $5 million grant for ODU to develop the Monarch Humanities Internship Academy, which will place 750 humanities students in internships over five years, including providing stipends for interns.

 The office also has also partnered with the Hampton Roads Workforce Council, which in 2024 received a $6 million U.S. Department of Labor grant to develop an apprenticeship hub. ODU, which has received about $500,000 of that money, is focusing on building an apprenticeship pipeline around maritime logistics and supply chain, cybersecurity and in K-12 education, Blake says. The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia also awarded ODU a two-year $100,000 grant to pilot the Federal Work-Study Internship Program, which started last fall.

Paid internships in Hampton Roads range from about $14 to $24 an hour, with some interns with engineering backgrounds making up to $28 an hour, Blake says, and some employers may have simultaneous needs, including for interns with engineering, accounting and technical writing backgrounds.

“How do I have those needs met?” Blake asks. “They can come to us. We write up the prospectus. We draw in the faculty. We work on the student placement end, and that has been the most exciting work, because the employers absolutely love it.”

Building on that success, ODU has partnered with Boyd Gaming, which is building Norfolk’s casino resort, as well as freight forwarding company CV International, the Hermitage Museums and Gardens, Chesapeake Care Clinic, the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce and other workplaces. At one defense sector employer that Blake declines to name, ODU provided 47 student workers in 2024, far outpacing the five students it originally agreed to.

In addition to helping students gain experience, this helps employers, says Shawn Avery, president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Workforce Council. From the maritime, cyber, IT, health care and hospitality industries, local businesses have been “clamoring” for talent, he says, and that includes interns. That also helps keep talented young professionals in Hampton Roads, he notes.

“If an individual has a job before they graduate, they’re more than likely to remain in the region, and a lot of people do transition from internships directly into the job,” Avery says. “This partnership with ODU has really been game-changing.”

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ODU at a glance

Founded
Old Dominion University was founded in 1930 as a two-year college to train teachers and engineers as an extension of William & Mary and Virginia Tech. It gained independence in 1962 as Old Dominion College and began offering master’s degrees in 1964 and doctoral degrees in 1971. It was renamed Old Dominion University in 1969.

Campus
ODU has seven academic colleges, plus Eastern Virginia Medical School, the Joint School of Public Health and three schools focused on cybersecurity, data science and logistics. Its 337-acre Norfolk campus is bordered on two sides by the Elizabeth and Lafayette rivers. The school also operates regional higher education centers in Virginia Beach, Portsmouth and Hampton. ODU is designated an R1 Research Institution.

Enrollment*
Undergraduate: 17,746
Graduate: 5,397
First professional: 600
In-state: 19,559
International: 749

Employees
1,169 full-time faculty
5,504 total faculty and staff

Tuition and fees**
In-state undergraduate tuition and fees: $12,750
Out-of-state undergraduate tuition and fees: $33,780
Room and board: $13,988***

* Fall 2024 enrollment statistics
** 2024-25 rates
*** Varies: number based on silver meal plan
and a shared dorm room