From left are Alex Stover, Terrance Egolf and Jon Everingham. Stover is the supervisor of Egolf, a student intern at Oakwood Resort, and Everingham is the director of the work based learning program at Wawasee High School. (Photo by Tim Ashley)
SYRACUSE — Employees who do more than what is expected will often get the attention of their supervisor. This has been proven true again by Terrance Egolf, a senior student at Wawasee High School who is an intern at the Oakwood Resort in Syracuse.
Egolf’s quality of work was also noticed by Jon Everingham, director of the work based learning program at Wawasee. Everingham nominated Egolf for an IMPACT Award in the category of Intern of the Year for Indiana INTERNnet, an internship matching program managed by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.
Award nominees have been invited to a luncheon, which Egolf will attend, Tuesday, Feb. 18, in Carmel. Indiana INTERNnet will “celebrate internship excellence” at the 14th annual awards luncheon.
Egolf is a front desk associate at the Oakwood Resort. He answers the phone, makes reservations and checks guests in and out among other duties. He has been an intern since the start of the school year and works approximately 32 hours per week, though he has actually worked at Oakwood since April 2018.
Prior to working at Oakwood, he worked at the Brook Pointe Inn in Syracuse.
Everingham said Egolf is “in good standing” at the school, is involved in a lot of good activities and plans to attend college and study hospitality management. He was also voted Employee of the Month for December at Oakwood.
Alex Stover, Egolf’s supervisor, said he put his knowledge of a hotel desk to work quickly and “goes above and beyond what I ask him to do.” She said Egolf is the type of employee who takes initiative and does not wait to be told what to do.
“I like helping people be satisfied, like when they are on vacation,” Egolf said, commenting on what he enjoys about working at the hotel front desk.
He said he has learned multi-tasking, the need to be flexible and the reality good customer service is important. Stover noted particularly in small towns like Syracuse, hotel customers get their impressions of the area by the service given at the hotel.
Work based learning at Wawasee matches about 80 students, mostly seniors, with a local business where they can gain some hands-on experience. Everingham said it is a “career oriented program” where students are plugged in to career related jobs.
“We are educating students on what industry is here,” he said, hoping at least some of the students will stay in the area after they graduate.
Students can use work based learning to find out if they like a particular career and employers can use the program to see if a student is a good fit and perhaps even offer them a full-time job later.
Egolf is the first Wawasee student to be nominated for an IMPACT Award. Everingham noted he only recently became aware of the awards program.
“Like any program, our reach is limited to whoever learns of us, but we continue to work to be known across all 92 Indiana counties,” said Mike Slocum, executive director of Indiana INTERNnet.