This year marks the fourth year that LSA Technology Services has sponsored interns through the ITS Internship Program. The program is in its 10th year and had over 1,000 applicants this summer. LSA Technology Services welcomed ten interns who worked on six projects across a variety of disciplines, gaining valuable experience and making meaningful connections. The end of the program is celebrated with a Program Showcase, where interns present their work through poster presentations and a supplemental cohort project in collaboration with other interns across the entire program. The cohort projects are pitched by ITS staff or campus partners and do not have to be related to the intern’s main job role.
When asked what their favorite part of the internship was, Serena Irani said it was “the opportunity to soak up every bit of expertise and advice from so many brilliant people within LSA and ITS. Everyone has been so patient and understanding towards us interns, always willing to chat about career paths and interests, and those conversations have definitely made my experience here for the better.” Mohammad Arjamand Ali agreed that the program has an impact on gaining real-world experience: “This is the first time I've had a significant contribution to a large project in a team environment. I really loved that I had a role to play in all aspects of the application: initial design, implementation, testing, and deployment. After this internship I really feel comfortable with building a production level application of my own, if I decide to one day.”
LSA Technology Services greatly appreciates the work put forth by Aditya Menon, Rena Shen, Satyadev Moolagani, Mohammad Arjamand Ali, Paulina Skakun, Junwoo Park, Serena Irani, George Zeng, Charlie Zheng, and Asmina Sainju. Learn more about their projects below:
The Great .Net Migration - Aditya Menon and Rena Shen
Menon and Shen assisted with moving our .NET team’s suite of applications to the latest and greatest that Microsoft tech offers. As part of the project, they explored various offerings within the modern .NET ecosystem to assess the feasibility of migrating existing LSA Technology Services applications. They documented the similarities and differences in syntax, architecture, and tools. Regular code reviews with senior developers ensured high-quality output and valuable feedback. To better understand the implementation and philosophy behind modern frameworks, Menon and Shen delved into how they worked 'under the hood.' Pair programming, bi-weekly team coding sessions, and occasional independent research were key strategies that helped cover a lot of ground in a limited time. Menon and Shen successfully refactored and modernized an existing .NET codebase, resulting in a more maintainable and readable application with potential for cross-platform development. They also created comprehensive documentation to ensure a smooth project handoff.
LSA Space Ready Application - Mohammad Arjamand Ali, Satyadev Moolagani, Charlie Zheng, and Palina Skakun
LSA Technology Services has a team of student staff who perform nightly in-person checks on classroom equipment. For years, the team has collected data and managed issues manually, resulting in an inefficient and error-prone workflow. Ali, Moolagani, Zheng, and Skakun worked together to create an application that integrates a room check form, historical data visualization, support ticket submission, and automated reports. The Space Ready application streamlines the process and enhances the user experience and efficiency of LSA Technology Services staff.
Our intern’s goals for this project were to create a production-ready application, ensure accessibility, and develop a user-friendly design for both web and mobile platforms. They successfully created a robust application, which includes automated reports to enhance operational efficiency. Throughout the project, our interns gained valuable experience in Ruby on Rails, web accessibility, deployment, and testing. The Space Ready application is used by staff who support over 300 classrooms on Central Campus, which are used by over 22,000 students, faculty, and staff members in LSA. Learn more about this project in our Space Ready Application news article.
Film Equipment Orientation - Junwoo Park
Our existing equipment orientation videos for advanced professional equipment were either outdated or absent, leaving faculty, students, and staff attending in-person orientations with our technology library assistants unprepared. To address this issue, Park developed updated orientation videos to streamline the process and enhance customer preparedness.
Park performed pre-production tasks such as researching orientation guides and previous videos, scripting, and storyboarding. This was followed by studio filming and voiceover recording during the production phase. In post-production, Park focused on editing and gathering feedback. The results of this project included two completed orientation videos for the Blackmagic 4K Pocket Cinema Camera and Portable Audio. Additionally, Park finalized the script and footage for Hotlights and produced full documentation covering pre-production, production, and post-production processes.
LSA Accessibility Website - Serena Irani
U-M and LSA offer a wide variety of accessibility resources, but they are currently spread across multiple websites and platforms, making it difficult for students, faculty, and staff to find and utilize them. Irani’s project aimed to create a consolidated and organized website that hosts all accessibility resources and pathways for support, increase awareness of accessibility efforts and initiatives at U-M, and ensure full accessibility of the site itself.
Irani plans to create a fully accessible website using Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). The process involves compiling a comprehensive inventory of existing U-M resources related to disability and accessibility, developing training pathways tailored to specific roles, and creating direct pathways for support. Irani designed a wireframe to determine optimal site navigation and layout, and evaluated existing AEM sites to catalog known accessibility issues. The identified accessibility issues were communicated to web developers and design personnel to raise awareness so they could be resolved. The website is currently planned to launch in the fall.
Flora Vue 3 Migration - George Zeng
Zeng’s objective was to upgrade the Michigan Flora website from Vue 2 to Vue 3 to enhance performance, stability, and overall user experience, given the backward incompatibility of new features and updates. The website is used to look up information, data, and photos of particular plants. The project began with installing Vue 3 and the Vue migration build, followed by fixing errors caused by incompatible features. Zeng identified any features that were not functioning as expected, collecting warnings and errors, and categorizing them into four types: incompatible, replaced, renamed, and removed. He then systematically addressed all exceptions, issues, and bugs before reviewing the website for any overlooked problems.
Zeng successfully migrated the Michigan Flora website from Vue 2 to Vue 3, while maintaining all previous functionalities and resolving more than 100 issues. There were no compatibility issues remaining post-migration and the entire migration process was meticulously documented for future reference.
Project Life Cycle - Asmina Sainju
Sainju had the opportunity to work on three different projects within LSA Technology Services, each at a different stage of the project life cycle, to develop insight into how projects evolve from conception to completion. By actively participating in the projects at various phases, Sainju developed a comprehensive understanding of project management in practice. She gained practical experience across all project lifecycle stages, honing skills in communication, planning, and implementation. This internship allowed Sainju to observe professional project management techniques, giving her a strong foundation in real-world project management and equipping her with the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate and contribute effectively to projects at any stage.
