Catawba College News Service

SALISBURY — Shelley Tyler-Smith has joined Catawba College as its new director of internships.

Collaborating with the offices of Career Services and Catawba to Career, she will help standardize and implement an internship model that will be available to all Catawba students regardless of academic disciplines. She will also work with employers in the region to help standardize placements and expectations of Catawba interns.

Tyler-Smith has been the experiential education coordinator and career adviser for the past 11 years at the Charlotte campus of Johnson and Wales University. She was responsible for preparing students for their experiential education term (required by Johnson and Wales curricula) and also for gathering, maintaining and analyzing data about students’ use of the career services office there.

She developed relationships with regional employers willing to offer internships and assured those employers were properly trained as internship partners.

At Johnson and Wales, Tyler-Smith facilitated between 150 and 170 student internships annually. Of her new role at Catawba, she said she is “excited to grow and enhance the college’s already thriving internship program,” adding that she is an advocate for “continuous education and training.”

Tyler-Smith added teaching to her responsibilities during her tenure at Johnson and Wales. She had been an adjunct instructor of organizational behavior and human resources since August 2015.

Previous employment includes work between 2003 and 2006 as a revenue program officer with the Kentucky Finance and Administration Cabinet.

A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Tyler-Smith earned her bachelor of arts degree in apparel retail marketing and merchandising and her master of public administration degree with specialization in human resource management and organizational leadership from Kentucky State University.

She is involved in community service with the Covered Girls Organization (www.coveredinc.org).

Married for two and a half years to Markieth Smith, a credit card treasury analyst for Compass Group, the two enjoy traveling internationally and domestically.