Luther senior Ruud interns at the Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Iowa and South Dakota

Kole Ruud, Luther senior, worked for the Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Iowa and South Dakota as a project manager intern. Establishing a communication plan for the Sales, Training, Communication, and Membership and Enrollment groups, Ruud and his team were able to implement a product his team created for future agents to use.

The son of Sue Moen of Lanesboro, Minnesota, Ruud attended Lanesboro High School, and will graduate from Luther in 2018 with a degree in management.

His team also managed the resource financing budget shared monthly with a senior leadership team.

Weekly professional development meetings with the Human Resources department at Wellmark were where Ruud felt he learned the most in his internship. “This is where I felt like I developed the better part of my business acumen,” he said.

As part of his internship, Ruud gave a 15-minute presentation to his senior leadership team and 50 other employees about his contribution to the company and what he learned from his internship.

Through this experience, Ruud became aware of potential fields he did not know existed in larger healthcare companies, giving him options for potential career paths upon graduation from Luther. “The many complexities that the healthcare field has makes me want to learn more!” he said.

After graduating from Luther, Ruud will work as a financial analyst at International Business Machines in Rochester, Minnesota, and will obtain a master’s degree in a related field at a later date.

Approximately 10 percent of Luther students take an internship for academic credit each academic year. The Luther College Career Center assists students with their internship search through resume preparation, networking, online internship searches, career fairs, on-campus interviewing, and connecting the student to alumni through the college’s Alumni Internship Program. Students meet with a faculty adviser prior to the internship to create an internship learning plan that includes learning goals and assessment benchmarks. An internship work supervisor also assists in the process by writing an evaluation of the student at the end of the internship. Students also complete a self-reflection form to help finalize the learning experience.

A national liberal arts college with an enrollment of 2,050, Luther offers an academic curriculum that leads to the Bachelor of Arts degree in more than 60 majors and pre-professional programs. For more information about Luther visit the college’s website: http://www.luther.edu.