By Sarah Rose:
It is a pleasure to introduce you to one of our Catholic Community Connection Fellows, Luke McNamara. Luke served as the Account and Program Coordinator for Catholic Community Connection for the summer of 2024.
Luke graduated from John Carroll University in the spring of 2024 with a degree in Marketing and Supply Chain Management. He was a member of the JCU hockey team all four years of college which kept him very busy traveling frequently for games. This was not his first internship experience. Previously, Luke worked as an intern with Dr. Facca (Supply Chain and Marketing Department, JCU) and Dr. Webinger (Accountancy Department, JCU) for a research project on critical perspectives of business ethics and how experiential learning affects those ethics. It was Dr. Facca who mentioned this fellowship opportunity to Luke and connected him with the president of CCC.
When asked what he has learned during his fellowship, Luke shared that his position involved a lot of accounting, which was out of his comfort zone. He stated this was a blessing in disguise because he learned just how detail-oriented he is. His fellowship work required one to be very thorough to avoid and/or catch any mistakes.
His work was different each day, but most began with account receivable work. Luke went through checks and wrote site numbers for record-keeping and also looked back through the past months. Once they were set, he would enter the numbers into Excel, total up the batch, and print and copy those to keep for records. He also entered checks into MIP (a web-based accounting system) and ensured the totals matched. He would then send the information to the Health System Accountant who posted it. He did the entering and she did the back end and posting.
On other days he dealt with invoice items and accounts receivable tasks. It was “a lot of accounting”. At the time of his interview, Luke also noted his excitement to have a regression test planned with a coworker, which is something he did in the classroom. He was excited for the opportunity to see the test done in a real-world application.
In the future, Luke is most interested in operational work where one looks over a process and finds weak areas in the process, and locates where the process can be improved. He also enjoys dealing with people and the idea of customer relationship management. He would ideally love to find a position that has a nice balance with both of those areas.
When asked about his relationship with his supervisor, (Marian Rubin) Luke said she was excellent withhelping and supporting his work. He expressed gratitude for her helping to navigate new areas and for her willingness to help with the lack of clarity he first encountered.
Luke also shared about the great relationship he had with his mentor (John Parente). They spent an hour or two together at work each week and even met outside of the office at the local skateboard park. Luke noted how helpful it was to have a young colleague and friend who shared how he made the transition
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