Over the past two years, WashU students have assisted the Student Sunrise project team with a number of needs ranging from information design and website management to training material development and administrative support. The students’ academic interests encompass many disciplines including computer science, communication design and psychology.
“Internships are important learning experiences for our students, and to work on a project that will have a significant impact on the university is really rare,” said Sean McWilliams, senior change manager and manager of the Sunrise internship program. “They also give us a window into the student experience with our current systems, which, in combination with our student advisory groups, provide important insight into how we can help students through the transition to Workday Student.”
The program has five interns this summer, and four previous participants have graduated. For most it is the first time they have worked on a project of this size. Their work is already showing up in educational materials, training resources and industry presentations.
“I had a great experience learning what it’s like to be a designer on a larger team,” said Sasha Kostenko, BFA ’23. “I got to experience working from a style guide and designing visuals representing complex concepts. I also gained great experience collaborating with teammates, communicating about projects, and sharing and presenting my ideas.”
Learn more about our interns and view some of their work below.
The project is always accepting resumes from interested students. Please contact Sean McWilliams at smcwilliams@wustl.edu for more information.
Communications Interns
Leah Witheiler, American Culture Studies, Communication Design, 2022
Building from WashU’s brand standards, the project’s first intern Leah Witheiler evolved Student Sunrise’s visual identity through the creation of a standard icon style and color palette for project communications. Leah’s style recommendations emphasize simplicity and accessibility while helping Sunrise communications stand out.
Sasha Kostenko, Communication Design & Computer Science, 2023
Sasha, whose internship focused on communication design, used Leah’s visual assets to create infographics for campus presentations and the Sunrise website. One of Sasha’s infographics served as the central visual support for a presentation on stakeholder engagement delivered by the Sunrise team at the annual Alliance conference, a higher education conference focused on technology transformation.
She also expanded on Leah’s work with the Sunrise color palette to recommend color combinations that pair well visually while meeting web accessibility best practices for contrast.
Sasha’s infographics and icons appear across the Sunrise website:
- Student & academic record statuses infographic
- Sunrise integrations design & build process infographic
- Icons on the Resources page
Josie Robinson, East Asian Studies, Psychology, 2023
Josie supported ongoing management of the Sunrise website, including the publication of the Sunrise & Workday term glossary and maintaining the section of the website that details campus involvement in the Sunrise project. Josie also assessed change impact materials from a student perspective, providing guidance on how students may perceive specific changes and questions they may have as we transition to Workday Student.
Hannah Leibovich, Communication Design, Human Computer Interaction, 2023
Hannah joined Sunrise for the end of her final semester. During her time with the project, she helped to expand and refine our icon library as well as update an infographic designed by previous intern Sasha. Of note, Hannah created an icon to represent the concept of academic appointments that appeared in the Feb. 2023 issue of Sunrise Spotlight. The infographic she updated appears on the Integrations page.
Jacqueline Yoon, Statistics, Communication Design, 2025
Current intern Jackie works on design projects to illustrate complex concepts and changes. For example, she is working with members of our change management and technical team to expand our educational materials related to the classification of students in Workday as active or inactive versus “current.”
Jackie also had a hand in developing several icons for the June 2023 issue of Sunrise Spotlight, including editing existing assets and developing a new one for leave of absence.
Lexi Suarez, Psychology, Marketing, Design, 2025
Current intern Lexi Suarez is partnering with the Graduate Admissions project to develop a support website to host Slate training materials and other resources. She also supports the development and delivery of Sunrise email communications, newsletters and webpages, including this very article.
Training Interns
Wenting Yu, Psychology, Computer Science, 2025
Wenting is a current intern working with the Sunrise training team to design icons and video templates for Workday Student training.
Molly Morton, Psychological Brain Sciences, Educational Studies, 2025
Molly is a current intern who has contributed to the development of accessibility resources and writing style guides for the training team. Like Wenting, she is developing training video templates.
Technical Team Interns
Bhakti Malhotra, Computer Science, PNP, Statistics, 2025
Bhakti is a current intern providing project management support to the Sunrise technical team. She is the official notetaker at integration design meetings with downstream delivery partners from WashU’s schools and academic units. She also keeps the team coordinated by reviewing and updating dates across the team’s project plans and trackers. Because of her analytical interests, Bhakti will help review of millions of rows of converted data and advise on formatting to best display these results in reusable reports.