To date, the programs launched
by the INTERalliance include its IT Careers Camps program,
paid summer internships, high school chapters hosting
area-wide events open to student INTERalliance from
all participating high schools, community outreach service
learning programs that harness IT and technology, and
college co-ops and internships that bring selected undergrad
and graduate students into direct employment at leading
companies around the region. The programs are organized
in a continuum of opportunities that begin with those
offered to graduating 10th graders and continue through
undergrad and grad school. To reach students younger
than 10th grade and create a pipeline of interested,
engaged students, the INTERalliance partners with Tech
Corps Ohio who offer "Girl Tech Corps" and "Student
Tech Corps".to co-sponsor programs such as "3GWIT" (Three
Generations of Women in Technology), being piloted in
2007-2008.
Three primary pillar activities
drive the IT Careers Camp program strategy – 1)
hands-on, behind-the-scenes problem-solving encounters
with technology, 2) face-to-face "early recruitment" encounters
with IT executives who are seriously interested in the
students as future employees, and 3) a service learning
encounter that brings to the students a chance to use
their creativity to make a significant impact on the
quality of life of those less fortunate than they.
A
host university conducts several one-week summer sessions,
each session enrolling twenty 10th grade students nominated
by participating high schools. The students are divided
into four competing teams of five, each team sponsored
by a local company ("Team P&G", "Team
Cintas", etc.), and assigned a full-time faculty
member from one of the participating high schools as
their Team Advisor.
As
pillar #1, each morning the four teams go on behind-the-scenes
site visits to the sponsor companies, "battling
for points" in problem-solving competitions designed
to show how IT is used to support operations. Past field
trips have included places like Ethicon Endo-Surgery
(they try their hands at surgery simulators/trainers),
the P&G Envision Center (they experience how P&G
uses 3D virtual reality for business decision support),
and the U.C. IT Center for Surgical Innovation (the
students “play” with the DaVinci surgery
robot that facilitates remote robotic surgery).
In
the more traditional business venues, the problem-solving
is just as intense. At sponsors like Kroger, Great American
Insurance, Cintas, and Fifth Third Bank, the student
teams compete to solve complex, sometimes not-yet-solved
business challenges that confront the local sponsors.
Challenges include how a Kroger store manager can use
mobile technology to handle all required management
reporting while still walking around the store... How
Cintas can minimize waste in manufacturing by using
software to squeeze every last possible pant leg or
shirt sleeve out of a bolt of cloth... How Great American
Insurance can use software to help them figure out just
how risky a new enterprise is that needs insurance coverage...
How Fifth Third's retail lockbox service uses IT and
technology to open, read, and process literally thousands
of customer payment envelopes each hour.
As
pillar #2, each day the students have lunch
with CIOs and senior IT executives from the local sponsoring companies.
These executives offer their business cards to the students,
encouraging them to send personal emails with questions
about college and possible career paths. They also use
the encounters to begin an early recruitment process,
building impressions and connections that will hopefully
attract and entice the brightest students to employment
interviews when they graduate.
Pillar
#3 is all about community service and using your talents
and creativity to serve others, especially those with
life challenges of a physical, medical, or socioeconomic
nature. The four teams spend every afternoon working
on a technology design, invention, or website that harnesses
IT to solve one or more problems for a non-profit "customer".
In 2006, one session of students competed with designs
for a "job board" website for the Citizen's
Committee on Youth, who finds summer employment for
students from the urban core. In 2007, the students
entered the first annual "Communication Enhancer
Inventor's Competition", in which the teams designed
a device using IT that would improve the ability of
a child or adult with disabilities from Stepping Stones
Center to communicate. Judges from Stepping Stones critiqued
the designs, selected a "best in show" winner,
and all 16 designs (4 teams x 4 sessions in 2007) are
now available for the students to "build" as
part of their high school chapters, in partnership with
university students and engineering-type representatives
from the corporate sponsors.
Changing the lives and perspectives of 80 of Cincinnati's
brightest young minds!
For four weeks starting on July 16th, twenty graduating 10th graders each week
got to experience a deep dive into the world of Information Technology at some
of the Greater Cincinnati region's leading employers.
The students were nominated by
their high schools for a wide variety of reasons, each responding
to the request from the INTERalliance for students "who would
get the most out of being shown what's available right here in Cincinnati
in the way of career opportunities in IT."
The 80 students were selected from 16 local college-prep high schools, including
Cincinnati Country Day, Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy, Cincinnati Christian
Schools, Hughes Center HS, Indian Hill HS, Mount Notre Dame HS, Mother of Mercy
High School, St. Henry's District High School, St. Ursula Academy, St. Xavier
HS, Summit Country Day School, Sycamore High School, Ursuline Academy, Walnut
Hills HS, Western Hills University High School, Withrow University High School.
Sixty-five percent of the nominated students were young women! Read
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