Trading Keyboards – New Internship Places Students at Portland Software Companies

We’ve always had a strong relationship with Portland State University but we’ve known we could do more. In the Spring of 2010 Dean Ren Su, Professor Warren Harrison and I came together to discuss new opportunities.

PSU is uniquely situated to be an excellent source of talent for downtown Portland companies, in fact, many of our staff are alumni. So, in an effort to create a stronger link between PSU’s department of Computer Science and Portland software companies we’ve created an internship program. We’ve also enlisted Tripwire and Jive to ensure we have the critical mass of opportunities needed.

The internship at PSU has been set up as a true win-win-win scenario. A structured program that provides students with real world work experience, Portland area technology companies with a pipeline of local talent and PSU with a tremendous recruiting tool for prospective students.

Public and private sector partnerships are challenging as motivations are often at odds. What is so compelling about the PSU Internship program is the alignment of motivation between PSU and Portland software companies – we desire to produce work ready computer science graduates who can hit the ground running upon graduation. We win, PSU wins and most importantly the graduate wins.

Ultimately, the goal of the program is to establish a structured, degree-granting internship program that works first for the student, second for PSU and third for Portland area software companies. Our hope is that once we complete the pilot the internship program will expand so that every eligible PSU computer science student has the opportunity to gain real world working experience as part of their education.

The application process for the pilot has completed and students are being notified about their placements. If you’d like to learn more or would like to apply in the next round, please contact Amy Dobler at amy.dobler@webtrends.com.