Three East Stroudsburg University mathematics majors completed internships at Allianz Life Insurance Company in Minneapolis, Minn. this summer. The students gained invaluable real-world experience alongside fellow college students for three months, and for some, it was the first time they lived several states away from home.<\/p>\n
Seniors Deken Upright, Aaron Zaso, and David Walker worked in different departments but collectively built on the foundational knowledge they acquired at ESU. Upright, of Montoursville, Pa., was part of the admin testing team \u2013 \u201csimilar to a systems analyst. My team validated the policy values going into the admin system were correct, so policyholders got the accurate values they were entitled to,\u201d he said. \u201cI worked mainly on the annuity products, determining whether the payments policyholders were receiving were calculated correctly, as well as the other benefits we offer.\u201d\u00a0 The work appealed to his meticulous nature. \u201cI\u2019m really into the problem solving, analytical side of things. My internship included a lot of investigative work, so we\u2019d often find mismatches in the information. When you find the discrepancy, you find the trail to discover what\u2019s going wrong to learn what needs to be adjusted or corrected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Zaso, of Nazareth, Pa., was part of the modeling team\u2014a group of people writing code for Allianz\u2019s reserving models so the insurance company can pay out its liabilities. \u201cThe simulation model runs a lot of different scenarios that could happen, and the modelers write the code for that model. I did a lot with translating new riders\u2014additional benefits on the annuity\u2014onto our models. We translate our changes into pseudo-code which our modelers would understand,\u201d he said. \u201cSomething I learned is to always be organized, and the importance of keeping everything in one place so you can get back to something very quickly if you need to.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Walker, a mathematics and computer science major from Stroudsburg, Pa., was a programmer on the modeling team. \u201cI worked in the app development team for actuarial modeling,\u201d he explained. \u201cI was working on a distributed job scheduling system. All these actuaries had huge models they needed to run. I broke the model down into several pieces that could run on a bunch of computers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The students were recruited by ESU alum Anthony Walker \u201917 during a recent trip to ESU. Walker is now a senior actuarial analyst on the modeling team at Allianz Life. \u201cOne thing I love about this company is it\u2019s big on recruiting,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of the actuaries go back to their alma maters to recruit, and when I got this opportunity, I jumped at the chance.\u201d An ESU Math Club meeting served as a recruiting event. \u201cI collected resumes, spoke with the students a bit and did mini-interviews,\u201d adding, \u201cI can basically guarantee the students I recruit will get an interview. I can\u2019t guarantee they\u2019ll be hired, but my say carries some weight.\u201d<\/p>\n
After hours, the interns enjoyed exploring everything Minneapolis had to offer. ESU\u2019s students were part of a group of approximately 25 interns who lived at an extended stay hotel courtesy of Allianz Life all summer. \u201cIt was really fun,\u201d Zaso said. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a time when there wasn\u2019t something going on. It was my first time in a major city and being west of Pennsylvania. It was different for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The combination of campus resources\u2014particularly the Career Development Center\u2014and relevant coursework prepared them for their internships. \u201cThere was a course called math modeling that helped me prepare to use math in the real world,\u201d Walker said. \u201cIt really helped me in the work I did at my internship.\u201d Zaso visited the Career Development Center several times before submitting his resume. \u201cIn my sophomore year, I went to the center many times. I had them rip apart my resume about four times. When I sent my resume to Anthony, he said it was good and not to change anything. I had a lot of my math classes that prepared me for the rigor of taking an actuarial exam,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Internships are often a step toward a full-time opportunity and should be explored early. \u201cGet an idea of what you want. Your internship could shape your last few years of school because you\u2019ll have an idea of where you\u2019re going,\u201d Anthony Walker said. \u201cIn the actuarial profession, lots of companies have this philosophy that full-time hires come from the interns.\u00a0Internships are the<\/em> path to a full-time role. It\u2019s not impossible to get a full-time position without the internship, but it\u2019s less likely.\u201d<\/p>\n All three students said their internships solidified their post-graduation plans. \u201cIt confirmed my interest in the actuarial side. It was really cool to be there and find out that it\u2019s what I want to do in the future,\u201d Zaso said. \u201cI was hesitant to go to Minneapolis at first because I wasn\u2019t sure if that\u2019s where I wanted to be long-term. I would say to other students just go, even if it may not be where you see yourself long-term.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three ESU mathematics majors completed internships at Allianz Life Insurance Company in Minneapolis, Minn. this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":22736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[143,42,220,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news-release","category-points-of-pride-academic","category-slider"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22733"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22737,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22733\/revisions\/22737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}