Public Education Foundation officials say they need about 30 more internships for this summer's STEP-UP program that places low-income students in internships at local businesses and organizations.
Jeff Rector, PEF's business partnerships manager, said the program has placed more than 350 high school students from Hamilton County schools in paid summer internships across Chattanooga and Hamilton County since 2016, and the goal this year is to place 150 more.
STEP-UP Chattanooga interns have earned over $500,000 in wages by working at BlueCross BlueShield, EPB, the Tennessee Aquarium, Chattanooga Times Free Press, RiverCity Company, Habitat for Humanity, Girls Inc., the Chattanooga Autism Center and others. Interested employers can sign up at stepupchattanooga.org.
"Last summer, we had to turn away students because we did not have enough internships to offer them," said Dan Challener, president of the Public Education Foundation. "Every year, hundreds of students go through work-readiness training and are eager to work and make money to cover school expenses and support their families."
Newcomb Spring Corp. officials have been hiring interns for the program for three years, and Don Jacobson III, the business and sales manager who helps supervise the Newcomb interns, said he personally sees it as an investment in the next generation of manufacturers.
"While the chances of these interns becoming a spring-maker is slim, maybe they will work for one of the other manufactures here in town and help keep manufacturing here in Chattanooga," he said. "The real excitement is that ability to peel back the curtain and show these high school students that there are fun and exciting things happening right here in their backyard. That is my favorite reward out of this whole process."
Jacobson said the spring manufacturer's officials are big proponents of hands-on learning. Each summer, interns are taught 3D modeling and how to build and organize databases in Excel. They also sit in on customer and vendor visits to learn how to interact in a business setting, and they visit other local manufacturers every two weeks to see how the springs they are making are used in final assembly.
One student, Jarren Carr, said he thought the job would be boring and predictable in the beginning, but he ended up enjoying it and did something different every day. He said that the internship helped expand his resume and gave him valuable skills he would need as a mechanical engineer one day.
"The spring industry is a program running in the background of a computer - you don't know it's there but it's making everything work," Carr said. "The industry is absolutely valuable because, without them, machines wouldn't work to build other things. No one really knows there's an entire industry for it but there is."
Internships last 6-8 weeks during June and July, and interns work between 20-40 hours per week based on the needs of the employer. STEP-UP provides work-readiness training for students throughout the spring before their summer internships. Students will also receive support from STEP-UP staff and supervisors after they are placed with employers.
Contact staff writer Allison Shirk Collins at ashirk@timesfreepress.com, @AllisonSCollins or 423-757-6651.