Eryka Williams
National Intern of the Year
Eryka Williams is a senior Management Information Systems student at UCA. She most recently has been honored as the National Intern of the Year through the Cooperative Education and Internship Association. This very prestigious and distinguished award speaks volumes to both Eryka and our College of Business.
She grew up in Cabot and chose UCA due to its proximately to home. “I wanted to be close to home and UCA was the closest school to Cabot,” she said. The rest is history.
Outside of juggling working full-time and being a full-time student, Eryka has an interest in robotics. She actually leads a group teaching high school students about robotics and design as a part of the FIRST Robotics Competition. She enjoys giving back and investing in younger students who are interested in the Information Technology and Systems field.
She attributes part of her success as a student to one her classes instructed by Parker Woodroof. This class in particular was a marketing class in which she was prompted to think outside the box. “He taught in a way that no other teacher presented the material. He really challenged me personally as a student, as well as the class. His course impacted my thinking and provided me with concepts that I still use today,” Williams said. She also credited Dr. Bartczak and her Systems Analysis and Design course for preparing her to excel in her job each day. “It was great to get to see things in the classroom that I could apply to my everyday work,” she said.
She began interning at Ingen Software in Cabot, and later ended up at then Hewlett Packard Enterprises via a connection at the UCA Career Fair. “UCA does a great job of promoting internship opportunities and programming in the Career Services office. We have a lot of companies that are on our campus very frequently which is great for networking for future positions,” Williams said. “Without the Career Fair, this connection would have been significantly more difficult to make. The internship I received at HPE has now developed into a full-time position that I have accepted and plan to begin, at now DXC Technology, immediately following graduation.”
With Eryka’s honor as National Intern of the Year, she recently attended the Cooperative Education and Internship Association conference in Denver, Colorado. During this experience, Eryka got to serve on panels with fellow students as well as career service professionals from all across the nation. She admittedly received her highest compliment at the conference following one of her panels. “I had an individual come up to me and compliment me on my poise and participation in the previous panel and informed me that I am future CEO material. My career goal is to serve in leadership in a company and that was a very encouraging moment for me,” she said.