State Farm Research Center

  • Internship: May 2009 to August 2009
  • Location: 2001 S First St., Champaign, Illinois
  • More Info: Company Website

An internship at the Research Center of State Farm Insurance Companies was originally not what I had in mind for my summer involvement since I was getting much accomplished in my academic research on nanoelectronics. However, I gladly decided to work for the company once I realized the integral value of experiencing corporate culture and developing communication skills in a business environment. When interviewing with State Farm I was introduced to the innovationREADY™ and iSpeak programs, both of which develop interns' eloquence in selling real and relevant business strategies within the company. These are qualities I knew I would have minimal exposure to if I were to pigeonhole myself in nanotechnology research. I also wanted to build on my extensive past experience in information technology by learning and applying those skills in a large company. Thus I joined State Farm as a Research Intern in the Systems Department.

During my three summer months at State Farm, I worked on three separate and uniquely exciting projects. I was assigned a primary project on my first day and I was lucky to meet with my research lead from corporate headquarters in Bloomington, Illinoison that first day. From late June through July, most of the 40 interns also worked on one of 10 innovationREADY™ projects. innovationREADY™ is a program where certain groups in State Farm pitch cutting-edge projects for interns to research, develop, and present to some of the most important managers within State Farm. My third project came about in mid-July when a PhD intern realized my initiative and profound IT knowledge and asked me to join the DRI+VIN iPhone application project.

My primary research project involved researching and developing an Internet application for State Farm Agents by realizing a service-oriented architecture (SOA). This is in a bustling area of IT, thereby exciting me to learn about what I have missed out on while studying ECE.

In the iSpeak program, my group of six interns met weekly. We gave speeches on various topics and evaluated each other. I found it valuable to see other great speakers and to get personal feedback for my speeches.

My overall summer experience with State Farm well exceeded my expectations, and it felt great to have a largely productive summer. Even so, I did have to decline to working with State Farm in the fall semester to give greater priority to academics.