Contact my email or number for more info.

Email: ayrania1@umbc.edu

Phone number: 703-622-9080

I hope this fall semester has been enjoyable so far! This post is a reminder that Involvement Fest will be taking place this Wednesday on 9/6 from 12 to 2pm on Erickson Field. If it ends up raining on Wednesday, the alternate indoor location is the Retriever Activity Center.

If you're able to stop by during this time period, feel free to come visit us and check out a preview of our plans for the fall semester! If anyone has any questions or wants a copy of the fliers we will have at our booth, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Name: Allie Smith

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Semester of Internship: Summer 2023 

Major: BTA

Current Class Level: Senior 

This semester I completed a(n)...: Internship 

Internship, Co-op, or Research Site (Company/Organization Name): T. Rowe Price

Location of the Organization (City, State): Baltimore, MD

Title of position: Intern with the GCAS department 

I interned within the Global Client Account Services (GCAS) department within T. Rowe Price. Within this department I worked in the strategy and planning team, which does a mix of business admin and data management work to support all of GCAS globally. This team aligned perfectly with my BTA major since I was able to do work with both the business side and the technology side. Most of my day to day responsibilities included working on my projects. I can't get into specifics, but I was able to create a best practice guide for social media use for all of GCAS that I was able to present to our London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, and North America locations. I also conducted a technology review to determine the tech that GCAS associates have in and out of the office. With this review I was then able to work on a "tech starter pack" for new GCAS associates based on title and level. On the data side I worked on a project with Power BI to create a visual dashboard for managers to get multiple different views of their processes in order to see room for improvement. This is a project that I am still currently working on since my team asked me to stay on until the end of the year. 

I heard about the internship positions at T. Rowe from an event that UMBC had. It was towards the beginning of the semester last year, they had an event where T. Rowe employees and previous interns came in to share their experiences and discussed the different internship opportunities. From here I applied online for an internship, and went through a series of online interviews in order to obtain the internship. 

Networking events (UMBC Connects, Info Sessions, Arts With a Purpose, etc.)

I have enjoyed the networking opportunities because I was able to learn more about T. Rowe and the investment industry through the eyes of different associates with different backgrounds. I also enjoyed that I was given meaningful work and projects where I was able to learn things that related to my major and interests. 

I believe that my work has been impactful for the GCAS department because I aided in creating a social media best practices document that is housed on the landing page for all associates to see globally. Also my technology review aided the department so that the lead team is aware of what technology GCAS associates have and gives them a better way of looking at that information. And also through the dashboard that I created, this will be something that GCAS managers will actively use to visualize trends within their processes to see room for improvement. Overall, the work I was given was meaningful and are things that the department will benefit from having.  

Don't be scared to apply. I was hesitant at first to apply to an internship within the investment industry because it was an industry I did not have a lot of knowledge on. But I was still able to get this internship with my current interests, and then I was able to learn more about a field I may have never gotten the opportunity to learn about. 

Two of the main things that I learned from this internship that I will take with me wherever I go next in my career / education are the importance of continuous learning and the importance of networking and communicating with new people. 

In summer '23 Meghan Kwon participated in an REU at University of Tennessee, Knoxville where she worked with Dr. Kwai Wong on Graphical Neural Networks to uncover linkages between gene and auto-immune diseases.

Meghan is also an Undergraduate Merck Fellow working on research at UMBC, where she studies migration of cells as a cluster in the tight spaces of the fruit fly embryo during development.  She uses differential equations to represent the boundary points of cells and applies forces of adhesion, repulsion, volume, membrane, and migration forces and to understand and predict in vivo migration imaging data.