Miami University is looking to bring new businesses and entrepreneurial students together with its
Altman Summer Scholar Internship Program.
The program, beginning no earlier than May 19, offers an opportunity for students to gain at least 10 weeks of full-time work experience with a startup—which includes compensation—and provides a reimbursement to the host company for part of what the intern is paid.
"[Program founder John Altman] really saw a vision for always doing stuff that is experiential," says Jessica Reading, assistant director at the
Page Center for Entrepreneurship at Miami. "Entrepreneurship is not something that is taught in a classroom or from a book. It's taught by learning and doing it."
Creating an experience mutually beneficial to students and startups—as well as the university and surrounding entrepreneurial community—is one of the program's primary goals, allowing students to work side-by-side with key business members.
Altman recognized that many startups didn't possess the capital—whether money or time—to train and prepare for interns, so the program was created to provide companies with the opportunity for assistance.
"Instead of it just being where students sign up for an internship and they go work for a summer, they sign up for experience in which they not only add value to an entrepreneurial company that has the need, but they learn to seek out opportunities within that company to continue to contribute to what that startup is doing and understand and connect to the entrepreneurial ecosystem," Reading says.
Last year, the 12 participating students met with the cohort program's founders weekly to discuss experiences and attend coaching sessions on business models and ways to identify opportunities within their own entrepreneurial environments.
"We became kind of known in the entrepreneurial ecosystem as the Altman interns in the area," Reading says. "So there was a berth of them that you could think about or go to for thoughts about what the university was doing."
The program, active in both Cincinnati and Chicago, has previously partnered with host companies such as
Roadtrippers,
Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance,
Go Health,
Built in Chicago, among others.
"We ask that [students] are employed full time, whatever that looks like," Reading says. "From a compensation standpoint, that can either be hourly or a stipend for the summer. Typically, it's probably about $1,000 that we give back."
The deadline for host company applications is January 24.
Kyle Stone
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