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A Publication Featuring The Information Services Technology of Maine State Government
| Volume IV, Issue 9 | September 2001 |
By Bob Dudley
Maine Career Advantage (http://mca.mtcs.net/) is an educational opportunity program that helps students prepare for the world of work by combining academics with an internship1 at a work site in a related career field.
Do you have a college-aged teenager hanging around the house? Do you want his, or her, time occupied? Ever wonder what happened to OJT (On The Job Training)? You can occupy their time! You (your agency, really) can take a junior or senior year technical college student into your work place and help "mold" them into the professionals you want working in your office in the future. This is called INTERNSHIP.
Readers would probably be most interested in the Program’s Computer Technology career cluster, which is designed for business, manufacturing, educational, or governmental settings, requiring any of a wide variety of computer services. Training is initially provided in general technical functions, customer service, and information processing and management. Interns then receive specialized training in areas such as local-area networks, equipment installation and service, or mainframes. New positions are being developed in the areas of wide-area networks, programming, Internet services, and software design/engineering. This internship is designed in part with the Vocational-Technical Education Consortium of States (V-TECS) occupational skill standards for this career field.
The benefits of internship are threefold; 1) The intern gets experience in the workplace and gets paid for it in the form of a regular paycheck and college credits, 2) You get the benefit of seeing that person trained and ready to face the business world when they graduate, and 3) Once the intern has some training, they return the favor by doing productive work in your office!
Many state agencies have already started with the intern program including Human Services, Transportation and Marine Resources. My experience is with the Computer Technology (CT) interns. DHS’s Division of Technology Services’ Augusta office has had a CT intern working there for about 9 months. He has integrated with the IT team very well. He has helped deploy several hundred PCs as we roll out the newer systems at various state locations. There is a Computer Technology intern working in the DHS office in Portland, as well. He works with me, learning and performing tasks in the Portland, Biddeford and Sanford DHS offices.
While this article’s focus is on the Computer Technology Career Path, internships are available for many other occupations as well. To find out more on internships and sponsoring of interns, please visit the Maine Career Advantage website (http://mca.mtcs.net/) for more information.
1. Internships are highly structured learning experiences designed to give students a solid foundation of professional skills and knowledge.
