Potential at work

Christian Burt submitted a summer internship application to IBM as a sophomore in September 2025. During winter break, he received the best Christmas gift he could have hoped for — an offer with IBM’s pension planning and retirement funds team in Armonk, New York.

Barely two months into the internship, his nose was buried in market research, creating presentations with investment suggestions for the billions of dollars in assets under the team’s management to help secure the best long-term return.

“I got lucky with my placement within IBM,” Burt said. “I’m on a team that is willing to have the interns really integrate themselves in the team.”

Burt is one of 11 University of Dayton School of Business Administration students who interned during the summer with IBM, mostly in financial analyst positions.

Seniors Nora Lynch, business economics major, and Jacob Kavanaugh, business analytics major, interned in summer 2025 and loved it so much — and IBM them — they returned to Armonk for their second internship placements with the company.

“Honestly, I had a great experience the first year,” Kavanaugh said. “I wasn’t some assistant running around and doing chores. I got real work. They trusted me.”

During her first internship, Lynch was on a team dedicated to the Americas for all IBM products, like Cognos Analytics and Blockchain Platform. She was tasked with familiarizing herself with a new data visualization software, a tool useful for her team to quickly understand the financial position of one software or other product.

“They pushed on the interns to experiment, explore and relay use cases or best practices back to the team,” she said. “I had no idea how to use it and I had to teach myself.”

Lynch trained the AI system she was using to help her code dashboards by working backward from what she wanted to achieve to the building blocks required to create it.

During fall 2025 on campus, 28 students, including Kavanaugh and Lynch, participated in an AI case competition hosted by IBM. They learned about limitations, blind spots, biases, and legality and confidentiality considerations necessary to work with AI responsibly.

That same semester in November, the University and IBM announced a joint semiconductor technologies and materials research and development venture, which is expected to include a new semiconductor nanofabrication facility at UD with IBM’s contribution of state-of-the-art equipment in 2027.

This symbiotic partnership can be seen in the many ways the two organizations engage, like IBM campus recruiting events and career fairs. Or woven into curricula and conversations with faculty and administrators on AI integration, and collaboration across engineering, quantum computing, finance and sales.

It’s a partnership that makes sense.

“The culture at IBM, I kind of connected to Dayton,” Kavanaugh said, noting how community is valued at both campuses. “Everyone that works there is very helpful, willing to talk to you, willing to help you. … The culture was a big thing for me, honestly.”

Kavanaugh and Lynch said there are plenty of opportunities to connect to peers and colleagues. They toured IBM’s facility in Poughkeepsie, New York, for a rare observation of an operational quantum computer, and the New York Stock Exchange. They also joined the company’s softball league and Lynch, an IBM soccer team.

“I’m not just getting projects, I’m getting the experience of a financial analyst, which was what my manager wanted for me this summer. It’s very nice to have the experience and get a real taste of what I would be doing in the role day to day.”

The years leading up to these internships include participation in student-run organizations, leadership and service opportunities, and skill-building jobs. All of these helped the Flyers make sense of their strengths and areas for growth, encouraging them to aim high with their goals and work hard to meet them.

Burt said his role as a tutor and supplemental instructor taught him to be a confident leader and speaker, and being a financial analyst with the Hanley Sustainability Fund, a student-managed equity portfolio of companies with environmentally conscious or resource-efficient business models, has nurtured friendships and experiential learning opportunities.

“It’s a great group of people, and they really prepare you well to go into the workforce,” Burt said. “It’s so competitive within the fund, in a good-spirited way, that it pushes you to put yourself out there and want to achieve a big goal, and mine, obviously, was working for IBM.”

Lynch said an IBM internship wasn’t on her radar until her accounting professor, Tim Keune, recommended her to a recruiter after she took an honors class with him.

“I wouldn’t have even known about the internship had it not been for his recommendation,” Lynch said. “It’s always helpful to have someone speak on your behalf — he knew me as a student, I went to his office hours. Dayton professors will go above and beyond for you, sometimes even when you don’t know.”

Thanks in part to Keune, she spent her summer in IBM’s worldwide expert labs division, which provides consulting services to help clients integrate IBM products with their existing systems. Specifically, she’s preparing and presenting the financial data of an expert labs team that brings new clients to IBM software. Her work helps the team track the real numbers — income, costs and if margins are thin — and gives leaders the information they need to make decisions.

“I’m not just getting projects, I’m getting the experience of a financial analyst, which was what my manager wanted for me this summer,” Lynch said. “It’s very nice to have the experience and get a real taste of what I would be doing in the role day to day.”

That taste has given her a hunger for the real thing — a job with meaningful work, where she can apply and grow her skills. Working for IBM is the goal, but Lynch is keeping her mind clear on the process and not the outcome.

“All I want to do now is learn, I want to know everything that I can,” she said. “I want to be anywhere where I can continue to do that.”

Photograph by Keith Barraclough.

A version of this article appears in print in the Autumn 2026 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 14. EXPLORE THE ISSUE — MORE ONLINE