Insights and Advice from EA’s 2025 Internship Cohort

Every summer, Education Analytics (EA) is fortunate to welcome a new intern cohort to provide additional support and learn alongside our teams. Summer is particularly busy at EA since we are deeply engaged in analyzing data from the previous school year to deliver timely insights to districts before the new academic year begins. Launched in 2014 by our Analyst team, EA’s internship program was designed to cultivate a pipeline of future programmers. The team sought out students who might not have previous programming experience yet demonstrated an interest in developing their skills. Since 2014, the intern program has steadily expanded, allowing us to bring on additional interns to support project work across various teams at EA, including Brand & Communications, Business Strategy, Finance & Accounting, IT, Partner Strategy, Program Operations, and Software and Data Engineering. 

Our organization benefits significantly from the diverse range of perspectives and insights that interns bring to EA, and we wanted to highlight the 2025 internship cohort and their accomplishments. We invited the cohort to share their thoughts about their internship experience at EA, what they’ve learned throughout their internship, and what advice they would give to future EA interns. 

Meet Our 2025 Summer Interns 

2025 Summer Internship Projects  

In addition to completing other assignments and projects assigned to them by their mentors, EA interns dedicate a significant part of their internship to developing a project of their own design. The intern-led projects provide a unique opportunity to explore questions or challenges they are interested in and to pursue innovative solutions. While developing, designing, and refining their projects, each intern is given guidance, support, and feedback from their mentors to ensure they are on-track and prepared to present the projects to EA staff at the end of the summer. 

To demonstrate the diverse range of project topics from this year’s cohort, we wanted to highlight the projects created and presented by our interns this summer. 

Oscar Reza Bautista 

“My project focused on implementing data from Educator Preparation Programs (EPPs) into Enable Data Union (EDU). More specifically, building dbt models for resources related to the Educator Preparation Data Model (EPDM) so there is code that can pull Ed-Fi data into a warehouse. The two main motivators for my project are (1) the challenge of preparing code for data that we don't really have yet and (2) the potential benefits that come from having data on EPPs alongside K-12 student data to enable other professionals to do the work they do.” 

Sydney Hankin 

“The goal of my project was to analyze previous predictions EA has made through its Rally software to compare them to students’ actual test scores to see how accurate the predictions are along different measures. I had a lot of flexibility in terms of what specific checks or tests I did on the data to carry out this goal. As a statistics person, one of the most interesting parts of the project for me was the research I was able to do about specific statistical tests and forms of measuring prediction error. I was also able to gather all my work into clean graphs and visualizations to be displayed on an HTML Markdown, which was a fun way to get more creative with the project and make it even more widely applicable!” 

Kristian Harris 

“I explored how adopting a strategic approach to project management methodologies directly impacts results. My interest in this project stemmed from my desire to apply my knowledge by demonstrating the different types of methodologies and, more importantly, how to effectively determine the optimal methodology for various project scenarios.” 

Joanna Lam 

“My intern project involved three components: (1) expanding the Analyst team’s documentation on best practices for creating plots using ggplot2, a data visualization package in R; (2) developing starter code for commonly used ggplot2 plot types; and (3) creating a template for a data visualization library that enables analysts to easily showcase different plots they’ve created alongside the corresponding reproducible code. I was interested in this project because it enabled me to strengthen my own data visualization skills while helping the team more efficiently and effectively communicate their insights to a general audience.” 

Sophia Pan 

“I worked on knowledge management for my intern project, specifically examining how internal workstreams and teams at EA organize institutional knowledge. I focused on one of our largest delivery projects to catalog where certain resources were kept, and I investigated the multitude of platforms folks use to share use cases at EA, and to make recommendations for organizational improvements. This project really appeals to my personal inclination towards gathering resources and standardizing processes.” 

Alicia Severiano Perez 

“I worked on a Texas Inventory Dashboard, which is meant to display data availability across different districts, projects, and years in an interactive way. I was really interested in this project because it provided me with the opportunity to work with interactive visualizations and continue building my technical skills. Throughout this project, I tried to push myself to create things I wouldn't typically have time for on campus and work on creating something meaningful that EA analysts could use in the future. Overall, it was really fun and nice to get help and feedback from other analysts.” 

Kylie Richardson 

“I worked on the ‘EA at Work’ series, which highlights the people behind the scenes and celebrates the incredible work they do. I was drawn to this project because I wanted to learn more about how different teams operate at EA and gain insight from my peers on how they work best. It was also important to me that the series gave everyone a voice, even those who may not feel comfortable on camera by offering them a chance to share their story without the pressure of being filmed.” 

Vinessa Verheyen 

“I worked in a private evaluation lab to look at new features before upgrading our current Windows Servers.  I used Proxmox, a free and open-source virtualization platform, to host as an alternative to our current virtualization platform. I enjoyed this project because it allowed me to investigate new software and applications, such as Linux, virtual machines, and Active Directory management.” 

Deniz Yucel 

“I worked with the Barr Foundation, one of EA’s partners, a philanthropic organization that funds schools and programs to improve academic and SEL (social-emotional learning) outcomes. I explored if and when their results start reflecting on public data outcomes such as college attendance and absenteeism rates, running analyses both for Barr schools and comparisons between Barr and non-Barr schools. I enjoyed the freedom I had in picking my own methodology and questions of focus in this project. I had the opportunity to practice a range of different statistical methods and learned how to pick the best method for different types of data and questions. Thanks to the analytical nature of my project, I also had the chance to talk to some of the Research Team members as well. As someone who is hoping to pursue a research career in the future, I found these conversations invaluable.” 

Asya Yurkovskaya 

“I developed an automated testing suite for bundles, which are an internal tool used to load data into Ed-Fi. I really enjoyed the iterative process of the design, particularly in my experiences working with the future users of the testing suite.” 

Q&A with the 2025 Intern Cohort 

We wanted to hear from this year’s internship cohort about their experiences at EA —  what interested them in working at EA, what they learned during their summer internship, and what advice they would give to future EA interns. Here’s what they shared: 

What interested you in working at EA? 

• Kristian: “I was drawn to EA because of the forward-thinking culture and the opportunity to be part of a team at the forefront of Ed-Fi initiatives. I’m passionate about bridging the gap in education through innovative technology, and EA’s commitment to this mission aligned perfectly with my professional goals.”
• Alicia: “I was really intrigued by the impact of the organization because EA’s work actually helps people in the education system better understand their students, district, and school through analytics.”
• Sydney: “As someone hoping to pursue education policy, I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of what goes on throughout all layers of the education system. Data storage and analysis is a big part of that — analysis being something I was especially drawn to as a statistics minor — and so I was incredibly excited at the possibility of building up my coding skills while learning about and contributing to the sort of educational analysis that makes up much of the back end of education policy.”
• Kylie: “I’ve always been curious about how marketing strategies shift across industries, and EA gave me the chance to explore that within the non-profit world. I wanted to challenge myself creatively while contributing to a mission-driven organization where I could see the real impact of my work.” 

What have you learned during your time at EA that you’ll be able to apply to your studies and/or future employment opportunities? 

• Deniz: “I was able to put my coding skills to use quite a lot this summer. I think I have become much more efficient with my coding in R, as well as gaining experience in new functions and packages, and becoming more organized and uniform in my code. Learning SQL has also been a really valuable skill to me. While this summer was my first time using SQL, thanks to the support of my mentors and co-workers, I was able to make really good progress. I also believe I have become more comfortable with asking questions and being confident in my work thanks to the supportive, non-judgmental and collaborative environment at EA. I believe that everything I’ve learned throughout my internship will both support me in school and in an employment context.”
• Sophia: “I've learned so much! In terms of professional skills, I've been able to learn more about project coordination and project management, and my intern project enabled me to take a deep dive into knowledge management that was really valuable to me. EA’s robust intern program has also taught me a lot for my personal career development, from giving me a stronger understanding of the business lines at EA to allowing me to have a better foundation when searching for jobs and developing my career in the future. And I’ve grown a lot personally, too, getting the chance to interact with so many folks at EA from different backgrounds with different skill sets and getting the chance to see teams at work driving towards a greater cause.”
• Asya: “I learned how to design tools with user experience in mind. EA provided a lot of space for exploration and independence, which allowed me to develop a big project I am proud of. I feel a lot more confident in my skills and in my ability to find my place in a professional setting.” 

What advice would you give to future EA interns?  

• Vinessa: “I think that EA has a very welcoming environment, so take advantage of making mistakes and learning from them here. Every experience where I have not known something has led to me becoming more familiar and comfortable with both asking questions and trying new things.”
• Oscar: “Reach out to people in and out of the office! Try to make sense of staff who have a background, role, and/or interests outside of work that align with yours. Everyone is open to having a conversation and this can lead to project ideas or just generally a good time!”
• Sydney: “You are in for a very fun and fulfilling summer! Trust yourself and your ability to succeed and create great work, especially if an assignment feels challenging or if approaching a coding task that requires a lot of trial and error (for data analyst/engineering interns). Make the most of being in Madison, which is beautiful during the summer — try to connect with the other interns and do an activity together once a week, if possible!”
• Joanna: “Even though you don’t know everything, you still bring valuable knowledge and perspective. Have the courage to speak up, whether that’s with questions when you’re uncertain or with ideas you want to share. Trust that your voice matters.” 

The internship program continues to be an asset to EA by supporting the work we do with and for our partners, while also infusing the unique perspectives that each cohort brings to EA. The internship program ensures we continue to foster a diverse pipeline of talent and maintain an inclusive work environment. We hope the program will continue to interest passionate students in pursuing a career path in education, data, and technology.  

EA has been fortunate to bring on several of our interns as part-time or full-time employees after the completion of their internships — and whether with EA or another organization, the primary goal of our internship program is to help students find meaningful and impactful work.