Luther senior Rafael Lopes Broseghini interns at Colony Brands

Practicing programming and communication skills, Luther College senior Rafael Lopes Broseghini spent his summer working at Colony Brands in Monroe, Wisconsin.

Broseghini, son of Marcos Broseghini and Jacqueline Lopes of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is a 2013 graduate of Colegio Andrews. He plans to graduate from Luther in 2019 with a major in computer science.

Working within Colony Brands’ internet department, Broseghini utilized Agile methodologies which respond to the unpredictability of constructing software and the Scrum framework to transition Colony Brands’ data infrastructure from the Open Commerce Platform to the Salesforce Commerce Cloud. By automating back-end processes, he successfully replaced two to three hours of manual work with five minutes of automation. Broseghini also built and tested structured query language scripts which access and manipulate databases, to request Colony Brand’s current product reviews on 10 websites and ship to one of its vendors.

Working in the “real world,” Broseghini learned that being an outstanding employee requires more than possessing the hard skills of programming. “The biggest lesson I learned during my internship is that good communication skills””either via email or face-to-face””play a massive role in a company’s success,” Broseghini said. “There are millions of other people that know how to build great software [but] what I focused on was how to be different from others and ultimately bring value to the business,” he concluded.

The internship with Colony Brands clarified Broseghini’s goals for his career area and environment. Broseghini wants “to work with a team of young individuals in a startup business with a non-cubicle office setting.” Through this experience, he learned that he “enjoys writing logical, robust code more than dealing with database management.” After college, Broseghini “would like to pursue [his] passion for building software and tackle a position within the sports industry, guided by the principle that “quality code sets the stage for a more organized journey.”

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 also 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 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 2,005, 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.