Intern Spotlight: Allison Carlon

Allison Carlon of Fort Dodge is the Accounting Intern, for Iowa Lakes Regional Water this summer. A rising junior at Buena Vista University, Carlon majors in business and accounting. 

When asked how she discovered the position, Carlon said, “It was presented to me as an opportunity through our Career and Personal Development Office at school. I really wanted to start getting some internship experience so that I can build up my resume.”

She is excited to gain knowledge about how to apply accounting in an actual business setting. “In class, it's kind of hard to see how it is going to work because they give you the numbers,” she explained. “With this job, you have to see how to gather your own information and put it together in the accounting documents.”

“Sometimes just helping with daily office duties such as making copies,” Carlon said of her daily tasks. “When we need to send out letters I help with the mailing list and being sure that the envelopes are set up correctly.” 

Because her role has a CFO emphasis, Carlon has the opportunity to apply her classroom knowledge by actually creating and utilizing financial documents for Iowa Lakes Regional Water, explaining, “We had our year end on March 31, so we needed to start making the new year’s incoming balance sheet statements. I was able to use their spreadsheets to help create those. For more accounting tasks, I have been filing accounts payable, in addition to making new balance sheets and new income statements.”

Her advice to students applying for internships was to utilize the career office at their university and take advantage of all of the opportunities that come their way. “At BV, the Career and Personal Development office is always sending out emails,” Carlon said “Also, we get different emails from the school of business, so there are always opportunities being presented."

About the Iowa Lakes Corridor Development Corporation

The Iowa Lakes Corridor Development Corporation is the regional economic development agency for Buena Vista, Clay, Dickinson and Emmet counties. The Iowa Lakes Corridor’s mission is to foster, encourage, promote, aid or otherwise assist in the economic development growth and development of the four-county region.