We are excited to announce that we have a few spots for CWIT Affiliates to participate in CWIT’s Industry Mentoring Program (IMP) for the 2025-26 academic year. If you are selected, you will be matched with a professional in a computing or engineering field to help guide you through your academic and professional journey.

Mentors are professionals with at least three years of full-time experience in computing and engineering fields. This is a great chance to get one-on-one advice and insight from someone working in an area you're interested in!

Who Can Apply

To be eligible, you must be a CWIT Affiliate who is a sophomore, junior, or senior.

Program Commitment

This is a semester-long practicum that requires a few commitments on your part. Please only apply if you are able to:

• Attend all practicum sessions on the following dates:

• Fridays, 3:00-4:30pm: September 26 (on campus), October 10 (on campus), October 24 (on campus), November 7 (online), and November 14 (online).

• Meet with your assigned mentor once per month throughout the 2025-2026 academic year.

How to Apply

Applications are being reviewed on a rolling basis. For the best chance of being matched with a mentor, apply early. The final deadline to submit your application is Monday, September 8th. We'll notify all students by Monday, September 15th.  

Apply Here

We are committed to making the best possible matches based on best fit and mentor availability, so please note that not all applicants will receive a mentor.

10/1: Dr. Mariann Hawken (Director of Instructional Technology), Google Gemini: AI Tools for Research, Teaching, & Learning

10/8: Brianna Hughes (STEM Reference & Instruction Librarian), Assembling an AI Toolbox: Access-Oriented Approaches to Scholarship and Instruction

10/15: Nina-Simone Edwards, JD (Senior Institute Associate, Institute for Technology Law & Policy), Beyond the Hype: Embedding Ethics in AI Policy for Libraries and Higher Ed

10/22: Jennifer Posada (PhD student, Human-Centered Computing), Making Sense of Data with AI: Lowering Barriers, Expanding Who Participates

10/29: Manas Gaur (Asst. Professor, CSEE), and Yash Saxena (PhD student), Building Trustworthy LLM Agents for Academia through Structured, Interpretable Knowledge Retrieval and Source Attribution

11/5: Roberto Yus (Asst. Professor, CSEE), The Privacy Paradox of GenAI: What It Knows, Why It Matters, and How We Fight Back

When students think of working in technology, they may dream of moving to Silicon Valley and landing jobs at companies such as Google or Meta. But the traditional tech giants aren’t the only employers offering careers to computer science grads.

“When I first started applying for summer internships, I was like, ‘Let me apply to Google. Let me apply to Apple. Let me apply to Uber,’” says Wonder Akpabio, a rising junior in computer science. But she also took a look at companies outside the stereotypical tech world—and found an internship that felt just right in UMBC’s own backyard. This summer Akpabio worked as a global technology intern at the Baltimore-headquartered investment management firm T. Rowe Price.

Akpabio was one of four UMBC students who interned at the company this summer. She worked on testing and updating software the company uses to report the daily value of a type of investment instrument called an exchange-traded fund. Gabriel Farmer, another rising junior computer science major who interned at T. Rowe Price this summer, worked on a team supporting the internal email and text message communications software at the company.

“Once we leave, they’ll continue to use and build on what we did, so it’s definitely been fulfilling,” Farmer says. 

A company with Baltimore roots

T. Rowe Price was founded in 1937 in Baltimore and in the subsequent decades grew to include clients, staff, and locations throughout the U.S. and the world. In 2025, the company moved its global headquarters into newly built office space in Harbor Point in downtown Baltimore. They also operate a 72-acre suburban campus in Owings Mill, Maryland.

“T. Rowe Price has strong connections with UMBC and Maryland,” says Farmer. He appreciated the large network of Retriever alumni working there and the outreach the company did with the school, for example sending recruiters to HackUMBC. 

In the spring, T. Rowe Price hosted an online program, called “Launching Your Legacy,” designed to introduce undergraduate students to career paths within T. Rowe Price, and the asset management industry in general. Farmer applied for and attended the two evening sessions. “I was able to meet people who worked there, and it gave me a better idea of the company. Since I participated in the program, they offered a lot of help throughout the summer internship application process.”

Akpabio also made a personal connection to the company when she met a recruiter at the UMBC Career Fair who guided her through the interview process.  

Once arriving for their summer jobs, Akpabio and Farmer were each assigned two mentors within the company and given many opportunities to network with other interns and with more senior colleagues. 

“Anytime you ask a question, people are ready to help,” Farmer says. “It’s been a very good experience, and T. Rowe Price is definitely a place I could see myself continuing to work at.”

On left, Wonder Akpabio and Bintu Jalloh at the T. Rowe Price intern orientation. On right, a group of interns attends an Orioles baseball game together. (l-r): Bintu Jalloh, Roselyn Ojo, Sarah Floyd, Wonder Akpabio, Aracely Saenz, and Kate Martinez Palmero. (Photos courtesy of Akpabio)

Learning on the job

Both Farmer and Akpabio say they learned valuable lessons during the internship. 

“The main thing I took away was the value of allowing yourself to make mistakes,” says Akpabio. “At the beginning, I was afraid I might break something, so I quickly asked for guidance. Now, I try to rule out possible problems myself first. I find I retain information better when I let myself struggle a bit longer.”

Farmer says his most important take-away from the internship is the importance of networking. “Many people I met had experienced a point in their career where they felt lost. And it was the people they made the effort to build a connection with who helped them out of it.”

Farmer and Akpabio are still exploring career possibilities. Akpabio says she could see herself eventually transitioning to the business or trading side of a company like T. Rowe Price. 

“There is a lot of uncertainty in the tech world right now,” Farmer says. “Looking beyond the big tech firms and trying the T. Rowe Price internship was a great experience.”