Article courtesy of The Dallas Morning News, originally published August 12, 2008.
These were not your typical teenage summer jobs. No ice cream scooping, burger flipping or baby-sitting.
Instead, 90 Dallas students were dropped into real-life careers: They spent time at late-night crime scenes with Dallas police detectives. Others evaluated recipes for a national restaurant company. Click here to read more.
Article courtesy of Fastweb.com
Internships are one of the most important ways students gain experience and start to make contacts within their field. College students hold most of the available internships but more opportunities are now available for high school students looking to get valuable work experience. Click here to read more.
Originally published June 30, 2009 in UCI’s Find Yourself in the Circle Blog.
Now in its 12th year, UCI’s career readiness and internship program, Future Connections, has grown and matured in many ways like its participating students. As part of UCI’s Life Long Learning campaign, Future Connections links traditional education to real life work experience. And this year is the first time these connections will extend beyond Cleveland’s borders to the city’s inner-ring communities.
The program, which gives rising high school seniors the opportunity to apply and interview for internships with a number of the region’s biggest employers, has had a long history of exclusive collaboration with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD). But this summer, Future Connections will add students from Maple Heights and East Cleveland.
Describing the new direction, Future Connections Program Manager Charolette Harris said, “It’s important to diversify the schools and businesses because many of the students bring people to the Circle and expose them to these previously unknown opportunities.” She continued, “As we’ve interviewed students from inner-ring suburbs, we’ve found that a lot of them had never been to The Cleveland Museum of Art, or the Museum of Natural History, or the Botanical Garden.”
And for many past students, Future Connections has been instrumental for this exposure. Michael Robinson, a 2008 graduate of the program, is an outgoing, charismatic young man whose close relationship with Stanley Miller, executive director of the Cleveland chapter of the NAACP, helped secure the mentor as a guest speaker for Michael’s commencement ceremony at Jane Adams High School this past June.
As an intern with the NAACP and the Cleveland Fire Department, Michael learned everything from time management and organization, to fire safety and prevention, to the socio-economic realities of the underprivileged. Applying his knowledge from the NAACP to his daily life, Michael helped reverse the unlawful firing of his sister at a neighborhood McDonald’s by bringing her story to the attention of NAACP civil rights advocates. This fall, Michael will enter the Cleveland Fire Department Academy, while continuing his formal education at Cuyahoga Community College. When asked what qualities or skills have enabled him to get where he is now, Michael tends to credit everyone but himself. He did finally concede, “I guess I’m just good at working with people.”
With the wider reach that Future Connections’ expansion will bring, more students throughout the region will also have a chance, like Michael, to begin a lifetime of learning in University Circle.
