An internship program to encourage people of diverse backgrounds to work in technology was a success, and now leaders are working to carry it forward.
Denise Hirschbeck, assistant vice chancellor of Information Services & Technology, said her department’s internship program ultimately helped fill several jobs and showed that people without a background in technology could succeed if given the chance and appropriate training.
Hirschbeck’s office received a Diversity and Inclusion grant in 2012, contributed matching funds of its own, and implemented the six-month program.
“We demonstrated with this program that it is possible to include people from all different backgrounds and interests,” Hirschbeck said. “It definitely is a way to introduce technology as a career to people who may not have considered or realized it was an option.”
WUSTL advertised the part-time, paid internship program around campus as well as outside it, she said, targeting community colleges and vocational-technical programs as well.
In all, about 60 people expressed interest, 47 of whom took a test that was designed to assess a person’s specific abilities to learn and succeed at web development and other technology work. About half were invited to return for interviews. University officials ultimately selected a class of 10.
The IS&T team knew the assessment was a good predictor, Hirschbeck said, because they used it in the past to select and train others, several of whom still work at WUSTL.
Getting up to speed
A woman who had previous technology experience, but a gap in her resume and skills from 13 years spent raising her family, was an easy fit and quickly landed a full-time permanent job at WUSTL, Hirschbeck said, but she still went through the training to brush up and update her skills.
Lisa Goodman now works as a programmer analyst in the Admissions Office.
“I just feel so privileged to have been a part of it,” she said. “It’s taken people who have a programming mind who necessarily didn’t have the background who are really good at it.
“It lets the college test us and at the same time we got to test it.”
Another woman, Sarah Raske, has family members who work in programming and had taken some classes but never tried to get a job in technology work until this opportunity came along. But she, too, quickly landed a full-time position, then also completed the intern program to learn the right skills.
Those women, Hirschbeck said, normally wouldn’t have considered WUSTL as a potential employer had they not seen the ads for the internship program, made possible by the diversity grant funding.
Others went through the training and ultimately received and completed real work assignments. The rest of the class had no previous technology experience and represented diversity by age, ethnicity, race, gender and geography.
Interns spent weeks training on skills such as basic programming, HTML and web development for websites and mobile devices. Courses and work assignments were tailored based on interns’ interests and abilities as classes progressed.
Some of those interns also wound up with regular positions at WUSTL, and those who didn’t at least have the skills and real-world experience to fall back on.
“Everyone will be able to put on their resume that they have work experience in IT,” she said.
Future plans
Last year, it worked well because Hirschbeck had a vacancy and temporary flexibility in the budget. She took that opportunity to seek and match grant funding and work to improve the office’s diversity while also training people so they’d have the right set of skills to meet the department’s needs.
She has some other thoughts for how to keep the idea and its success alive going forward. One possibility would be to offer it to schools and departments around campus, which could provide funds for staff members to complete the program, and they then would return and handle some technology work. Another would be to offer it, for a fee, to outside businesses and organizations, and those employees’ training and work projects could be tailored according to various organizations’ needs.
Other aspirations include reaching out to middle school students, perhaps through the Institute for School Partnership, to kindle an interest in technology among young students who otherwise might not consider such a career. Connecting with high school students, who could train during the summer and then perhaps work part time after school during the year, is another possibility.