METRO’S FIRST INTERNS
One of the things that attract many students to Metro is the promise that after they complete their core credits we will get them out of the high school classroom and into professional settings and college courses. These opportunities will give them a head start in their future careers.
Last trimester we piloted our first internship at Battelle with two students who were willing to be our guinea pigs. Fralisia Jefferson and Alyssa Steed jumped at the chance to spend two hours at Battelle every day for 12 weeks. Both are excellent students and were even willing to work on additional independent studies to keep from falling behind in their credits while completing the internship.
Our goal was to test the corporate climate for students and determine what hurdles might develop that we hadn’t yet taken into account. To create our pilot internship, I “tested the waters” of several departments at Battelle that might identify concerns, including Legal, Risk and Security. Once we had the support of upper management, we put the girls to work.
They first spent time in Human Resources learning about resumes and job interviews. Next they visited Security Operations where they were introduced to security policies for building access and government security requirements, and then they received their own employee badges.
The remainder of their internship was spent in Corporate Relations. Their first order of business: to learn about Battelle tours and prepare to speak to visitors about what Battelle is, what we do and how we got here. The girls even learned to operate the original Xerox machine!
Other duties were to help with the corporate branding initiative, attend the TopCAT awards ceremony, and interview researchers to develop new scripts for tour stops highlighting carbon nanotubes and biotechnology. They represented Metro to visitors from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and served as team leaders to greet guests and VIPs for the Ohio Stem Learning Network announcement event.
Their final job was to prepare a presentation to the Battelle staff who had been involved in their internship to show what they had accomplished and learned through this experience. Each student received an elective credit in “Business Technology” and we felt we succeeded in paving the way for Metro students to get into the business world. We have eight more students in pilot internships around Columbus this trimester and next fall we hope the full program will be up and running.
Alyssa and Fralisia present their final exhibitions at Battelle
- - Posted March 24, 2008 - -
Diana Wolterman is on a two-year special assignment to Metro High School, where she will play a key role in furthering the collaboration between the private sector and education, including special projects to connect Battelle staff with the activities in the school, assisting with tours and visits, developing and implementing new experience-based curriculum support, and helping to document the process of creating a new STEM-focused learning experience. Diana also will document Battelle’s successes and missteps at Metro to help the organization learn from the experience and make good decisions going forward at Metro and in other educational activities.