This includes 50 hours of an internship experience where students are given opportunities to collaborate on tech-industry related projects and become aware of the use of technology in diverse industries. Students engage with employers in a professional setting be this in the physical workspace, meetings or through a virtual environment. For many students, the opportunity to see the day to day functions of an office is as exciting as the physical application of work itself. These 50 hours can be spread out over the course of a few weeks or if better suited for the employer, condensed to a shorter period of days. 

We’re looking for partnerships with employers who would be interested in including our students with their broad range of interests and skills. Our students are ready to support and help build technology integrated tools, creating digital content, contributing to the work environment as seen fit. Students in the IT Pathway have already experienced training in programming, as well as customer service and help desk troubleshooting. 

This includes a 50-80 hours of internship experience where Senior students receive mentorship from a local employer in a well-matched internship. We’re looking for partnerships with employers who would be interested in including our students who have a broad range of interests and skills.

Each Senior student has a foundation of experience and knowledge in the following: help desk, troubleshooting, programming, customer service, CISCO IT Essentials Certification, Google IT Support Services Certification and a focused area of interest in the IT field. Our students look forward to having their interests and skills in technology inform and contribute to your projects and operations. 

As a mentor, you would be providing one-on-one professional skills development, issuing tasks, and showing the ins & outs of your industry. You’ll facilitate or advise on intern projects and work with your intern to create meaningful tasks that are mutually beneficial. Interns become a “part of the team” – attending meetings, completing everyday tasks or contributing to a larger project or research. Each intern comes to the experience with an individualized focus and enthusiasm for the opportunity to work in an industry aligned with their interests as well.

Internship goals:

• CAREER AWARENESS- Be able to describe their internship company/business, their departments, professional roles, daily operations and company goals. 
• INDUSTRY SPECIFIC GOAL- Experience, observe and participate in any part of the  operations, projects or assignments required to perform in this industry. 
• PROJECT MANAGEMENT & PLANNING- Understand and articulate the components of project planning, collaboration, effective communication and time management.

Remember the days of “Take your kid to work?” Consider this to be similar, except in this case, you’re taking a student to work. In this type of experience, a student would join you for your traditional work schedule and you would be able to explain what your day looks like and the tasks that you undertake throughout your day. For example, if you’re going to a project meeting, invite the student along–have the student listen in with your team as you plan the next project. Going to a site visit? Have the student trail after you and explain what your goals and objectives are during this visit. Do you have a pile of data entry to do after that meeting? Why not consider splitting the work between you and your enthusiastic student? Students likely have not had the opportunity to see your type of profession in the day to day operations of it & benefit from the time you allow them to observe and learn.

Perhaps you have a project you see coming up or one you’re currently working on that could just use an extra set of eyes or hands to get the work done. This is the type of project for your intern. For example, I have to check off all of the students in our district verses those active in Google Admin. I’m going to teach the student about Google Admin & how to add & remove accounts & then have the student work on cross checking the list. The student can do students A-L while I do M-Z and suddenly, the project is complete hours sooner than expected. OR, you’re planning a new ice cream parlor and have a space in mind, what might the interior look like to draw in the students in the area to make it a communal space? Why not assign this to your intern for sketches and ideas?

Perhaps you have a project you’re working on that is well on it’s way, but you’d like your intern to understand the process that goes into such a plan… consider proposing a project to the intern where the student follows the same design steps you have done to get you to where you are–all the while providing mentorship & feedback along the way as would be applicable in your real job. An example of this would be one of our students partnered with a community employer at a robotics firm and was given a project that went through the engineering design process  with the end goal being to study and break down the process of building immersive VR that stimulated all senses. In this experience, the student noted, “During the course of the internship, I learned about biomechanics and prosthetics, tying in with my greater desire to learn about how machines interact with our senses, and how we can simulate those senses with machines.” While this project wasn’t explicitly tied to the work of the employer, it highlighted the process of the First Principle Approach, our student was thoroughly engaged, benefited from the mentorship & understanding of how a robotics facility might approach a project.

Perhaps you recently completed a project but felt like it could take a bit more attention to get it where you had hoped it would be–consider putting an intern on the task! This would be a great assignment for someone who is coming at your project with a fresh set of eyes. As the mentor, you can explain your goals and hopes for the project, and where you felt it fell short. Providing the intern with the vision for what you want can enable the student to work on this project while you move on to more current projects that need your immediate attention. This can also be a great way of utilizing an intern if you have a project that has been sidetracked as other ones have captured your immediate attention–consider having an intern take the project to the next step! You can also envision previous work or projects and provide the intern with pieces of information/components of a previous project and/or create a simulated problem solving exercise. You could choose to identify real world problems or projects to be researched.

Do you feel like you’d like to take on a small set of students to focus them on a project or task that might need multiple hands? This option would be the choice for you. An example of this project might be something that can be broken down by roles and responsibilities. In one example, a set of three students were tasked with creating an advertisement for a local web design firm. In this work, each member took on a specific role be it project coordinator, animator, HTML programmer etc. They were involved in project meetings, met with their client and reported progress on a set timeline with the employer. The employer modeled and discussed the various roles of each team member thus providing them the opportunity to see how a real-live project would look from the industry planning and execution side.