NEWS
Kinesiology students score major league internships
Hands-on learning has always been a staple of Louisiana Tech’s tradition of turning out graduates immediately prepared to make an impact in the workplace.
And Louisiana Tech’s Department of Kinesiology is hitting a home run in maintaining that tradition with three graduate students receiving internships this summer to work with athletics teams on the professional or collegiate level.
Benn Fairbanks is working with the Minnesota Twins’ Rookie League team in Elizabethton, Tenn., Tyler Donahue with a St. Louis Cardinals minor league squad and Barrett Stover is in his home state working with a variety of student athletes on strength and conditioning at North Carolina State University.
Dr. Lanie Dornier, chair of the kinesiology department and Roger Thomas Luffey Endowed Professor at Louisiana Tech, said the internships play a vital role in the learning process.
“Students are provided real world experiences in an environment that is exciting, educational and offers invaluable experiences,” Dornier said. “Students work directly with a site supervisor who serves as a mentor, and that provides a rich educational situation. It is great that our students get to share the knowledge and experiences they have learned as students in a real world setting.
“I think the internship sites are amazed at how much our students know about strength and conditioning in baseball.”
Under the internship guidelines, the three graduate students must complete a minimum of 220 clock hours at the internship site under the direction of a site supervisor. Students generally will work more than 220 hours while working in baseball-related internships because they try to work for as much of the seasons as possible.
The students are prepared for all that work because of preparations taken at Louisiana Tech before they moved on to the various programs they are interning with.
“Having worked with (Tech Kinesiology Professor) Dr. David Szymanski is a huge asset for the students and gives them a great head start with their internship experiences,” Dornier said. “Students are allowed to identify their own internship site or select from a variety of sites from which we already have a contract.
“We’re proud of the three students interning this summer and are pleased to know they’re helping Louisiana Tech making its name known throughout the country.”
Written by T. Scott Boatright – boat@latech.edu