Can Industry Introductions Lead to Internship Increases?

By Dr. Heather Lindberg -- 

Internships are a great opportunity for students to bridge the gap between classrooms—which emphasize theory with minimal practice and application—and industry, which focuses on applying theory and solving problems in real time with real consequences. Internships can help to address this gap. Research indicates that internships can help to ease this transition for students—from the classroom to the workforce—by providing dedicated mentorship, training, and experience within the industry setting (Veenstra, 2014).

Roanoke Valley, VA and surrounding areas are encouraging innovation related to agriculture, life sciences, and the biotechnology industry. Programs, such as Regional Acceleration and Mentoring Program (RAMP), a regional business accelerator, help to support STEM-related startup companies.  Some of these startups will turn into companies, increasing employment opportunities in the region.  With these developments, there will be more opportunities to build education/industry relationships—and to create internships.

While internships are valuable learning experiences, many students do not take advantage of them. Often, students will not even apply for an internship that is within their field of study. This apparent lack of interest may be due to other factors.  Many barriers can affect a student’s ability to participate in an internship: lack of transport, financial support, and confidence in their own skills, to name a few. 

The Biotechnology program at Virginia Western Community College (VWCC) is combating some of these barriers. We are adjusting some of the classroom protocols, workflows, and benchwork to parallel with internship opportunities. We want to create a safe, familiar space for students to explore both internship opportunities and real-world applications. Hopefully, this alignment will pique students’ interest in internships and encourage them to learn how the technology they work with in the classroom can be bridged into a commercial, industry setting.

For more information about the Biotechnology Program at Virginia Western community college, you can reach me at hlindberg@virginiawestern.edu. 




Acknowledgments

Hora, M. T., Wolfgram, M., & Chen, Z. (2019). Closing the doors of opportunity: How financial, sociocultural and institutional barriers intersect to inhibit participation in college internships [WCER Working Paper No. 2019-8]. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED603922.pdf

NCI. (2020, February 26). DNA Genotyping and Sequencing [image]. Unsplash License.  https://unsplash.com/photos/rb8hr3cXD4A

NCI. (2020, March 11). Chanelle Case Borden, Ph.D.  Unsplash License.  https://unsplash.com/photos/s6JDpyMpZ9g

Petska, A. (2022, September 25). Game changers: Regional effort links academics and entrepreneurs with economic development. Roanoke Times. https://roanoke.com/business/local/game-changers-regional-effort-links-academics-and-entrepreneurs-with-economic-development/article_f6eeb6f6-329b-11ed-8fc1-bf17b8dbd3d9.html

Veenstra, C. (2014). The collaborative role of industry in supporting STEM education. Journal for Quality and Participation, 37(3), 27–29. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cindy_Veenstra/publication/301337477

Yancy, D. (2022, July 14). How the life sciences cluster in the Roanoke and New River valleys stacks up. Cardinal News. https://cardinalnews.org/2022/07/14/how-the-life-sciences-cluster-in-the-roanoke-and-new-river-valley-stacks-up/



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Agriculture Peer Group Formation at the Virginia Community College System

Image
by Adam O'Neal -- Based on input from a cohort of agriculture faculty from around Virginia, an Agriculture and Food Systems Peer Group has been constituted by the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) to serve the needs of agriculture program faculty around the Commonwealth of Virginia. Peer groups have existed for other disciplines for some time, but none for this area of study until now. From the shared experiences of the Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL) cohort members and other agriculture faculty, we understand that collaboration at professional levels has proven challenging. This peer group promises potential benefits to agriculture faculty in unraveling professional challenges and related classroom and teaching concerns. Agriculture is the largest private industry in Virginia, with over 43,000 farms contributing to $82.3B a year in economic impact (Virginia Farm Bureau, n.d.). Though a number of Virginia Community College System ( V
Read more

Integrating Employability Skills in a Traditional Ag Classroom through Learning Badges

Image
by Dr. Mallory White -- To weave workforce readiness skills into a traditional agriculture classroom can be a little challenging. My first-year animal science class tackled four of the twelve AWT4CL employability learning/digital badges. This blog discusses how we did it, challenges and possible lessons for the instructor and the student, and overall perception of the digital badges.  How We Did It   First, I set aside one lab period to discuss the project and complete many of the in-class activities. This required me to combine two traditionally separate, short labs into one to free up a week, but I was determined to make room for important employability content . The activities from each digital badge created by the badge authors are short and effective, but I wanted the students to do more in order to earn a badge. As an instructor, it can be difficult to come up with new, creative activities in the limited time we have. As I was rushing to come up with additional activities and
Read more

Fresh Year, Fresh Perspective

Image
by Megan Seibel -- I don’t know about you, but there is something about starting a new year that brings mixed emotions – anticipation, excitement, and even a bit of stress over all the things that were supposed to get accomplished last year and, well, just didn’t.  It is also interesting that each new year seems to be long anticipated, yet happens abruptly. And the changes that go with it sometimes require thought and attention. Take writing the date for example. After 365 days of writing 2023, it became a motor memory. It takes thoughtfulness to write 2024, with the trust that it will quickly become automatic.  So it goes with habits and intentions. New Year’s resolutions, so to speak. Looking back over the past year, perhaps some things warrant reflection so that adjustments can be made to improve, begin, or even stop certain behaviors. Here are a few tips and thoughts, similar to the PDSA (plan-do-study-act) model , to consider as we go into this new calendar year, and second semest
Read more