In hopes of growing -- and maintaining -- the state’s life sciences workforce, Mayor Menino recently announced a $5 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. Out of that $5 million, $800,000 will help fund the Internship Challenge. Sponsored by the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, that program has helped placed 598 interns in over 200 companies across the state.
In hopes of fulfilling the need to increase the number of internships in the state, particularly within the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, the Center created the Internship Challenge in 2009. With a focus on small businesses, companies with no more than 100 employees are welcome to look at the Center’s database of students. Eligible companies have the opportunity to obtain a reimbursement of up to $7,200 -- roughly 480 hours -- per intern, and receive funding from the Center after each internship’s been completed.
Ryan Mudawar, the Center’s program associate and grants administrator, says they’ve targeted small businesses to ensure they’re “creating new opportunities and not subsidizing existing ones.” One of the bonuses of the Challenge is that it introduces students to the startup ecosystem we have here in the state, all while providing funding to various companies who may never had been able to afford an intern before or have the resources to reach a broader audience.
Barbara Fox, founder and CEO of Avaxia Biologics, admitted it’s also helped open her eyes to smaller schools. “Because the state is paying the stipend, it allows you to take a chance on someone you might not take a chance on otherwise,” she says. Through the Internship Challenge, Fox claimed her company’s hired two interns and is about to hire a third, as well as take two new interns on for the summer.
“It’s a great matchmaking service,” Fox says. “It lets companies take a look at a broad range of students in an efficient fashion.”
Susan Windham-Bannister, president and CEO of the Center, admits they joke about it being a sort of speed dating program, since employers can look at thousands of candidates and then choose to interview those they’re interested in.
Because there’s no application deadline for the program, there’s constantly a fresh batch of students in the database. Each application is set to expire six months after they’re submitted or updated, according to Mudawar, who says they had 1,300 applications in the system just for last summer’s program.
Some of the other companies who are involved in the program include Wolfe Laboratories, MicroCHIPS and Ligon Discovery.
“Our mission is really to fund ‘good science and good business,’” Windham-Bannister says, quickly summing everything up into two simple words: train and retain. “What they tell us, first and foremost, is that there’s such a talented workforce here, and they can find workers with skills here they can’t find anywhere else in the world. One of the things we really want to do in Massachusetts is retain the really great talent we’re training.”
With the goal of exposing students to the life sciences and entrepreneurship, the Center hopes to see the next wave of workers come from their Internship Challenge. To date, 20 percent of their interns have been hired directly following their internship at their host companies. Students who either attend school in Massachusetts, or attend a school outside but are residents of Massachusetts, are welcome to apply.
