Hershey internship a sweet success for IST student

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Briley Marchetti, a Penn State junior majoring in Information Sciences and Technology (IST), spent this summer working at The Hershey Company as an application design intern. There, he assisted a small team that develops applications and integrates services used by all Hershey employees.   A University Park student from Mountaintop, Marchetti says he learned new skills during his internship that he believes will positively impact his academic and personal growth, and allowed him to work in situations that would have been impossible to experience in a classroom.  “At The Hershey Company, I learned more every day about programming, system integration and debugging,” Marchetti said. “But some of the coolest stuff I learned was about the company:  I have had the opportunity to learn about the development of new products, manufacturing processes, the supply chain, and, of course, chocolate!”  Of the many things Marchetti learned during his internship, he said his most interesting project was helping to create a, “natural speech processor that allows employees to instantly unlock consumable data that is spread across multiple facets of the company.”  He enjoyed the top-secret task because of the positive effect it had on so many employees.“This internship definitely affected my career path,” said Marchetti of his time at The Hershey Company. “I had a chance to see many different positions throughout the company, which made me think about my future more openly. After this summer, I am definitely interested in becoming a manager for a development team — after a few years of programming and problem solving.”While his IST classes may not have prepared him for every application he worked with at The Hersey Company, Marchetti says they gave him the opportunity to apply critical thinking skills to the languages and software he used there.Marchetti plans to enroll in another internship next summer, and says that the programming work he accomplished at The Hershey Company this summer has reinforced his interest in continuing his IST degree in design and development.