Will County CED launches internship program with Joliet schools

The Will County Center for Economic Development wants to connect Joliet high school students with area employers.

“This is a program that has been a long time coming,” CED President and Chief Executive Officer Doug Pryor told a group of more than 30 people gathered Wednesday for an introductory meeting for a new internship program. “This is a way for us to start providing connections between our high school students and the business community.”

The CED is signing up employers until Nov. 10 to participate in the program that will provide internships next summer for students in Joliet Township High School District 204.

The internships will give students a head start on careers, keep more young people in the area as they go to work and provide opportunities for area employers to diversify their workforce, organizers of the program said.

Joliet Township High School Superintendent Karla Guseman said the almost 6,800 students at Joliet Central and Joliet West high schools are a diversified group demographically.

“Everyone talks about wanting to have a more diverse workforce,” Guseman said. “Well, we are a great resource for that.”

Guseman also outlined career-focused programs already in the Joliet high schools, saying the students get an education that starts them thinking about what they will do for a living. She said students in their freshman year are asked to identify a potential career path, and the high schools have career-focused programs to develop their interests.

“Our kids have a lot of exposure to career education courses that will guide them into the future,” Guseman said.

The CED is signing up employers until Nov. 10 to participate in the program that will provide internships next summer for students in Joliet Township High School District 204.

The CED plans to take the internship program to other areas of Will County after starting in Joliet.

“Our goal in the future is to reach out to other schools, but the Joliet Township High School District was the first to raise their hand,” said Kayla Sorensen, director of investor relations for the CED.

Sorensen is the contact person at the CED for the program.

She said the CED is looking for more participants. Interested employers can email her at Internship@WillCountyCED.com or call 815-723-1800.

Sorensen said after the Wednesday meeting that there appeared to be nearly a dozen employers committed to participate so far.

A couple of representatives from organizations and companies at the meeting talked about the value of the internship program.

“We do have college interns traditionally,” said Jen Hodges, network director with Trinity Services, a New Lenox-based nonprofit providing services to people with developmental disabilities. “This is a new opportunity. A lot of people don’t know about working with people with intellectual disabilities.”

An internship with Trinity Services “will be a great experience for students if they’re interested in the helping professions,” Hodges said.

Mushtaq Choudhary, dean of students at Governors State University in University Park, said the internship program “is an opportunity that never existed in the past.”

Choudhary pointed to his experience working at a Joliet 7-Eleven while a freshman at Lewis University, saying the demands of the job helped develop basic skills in critical thinking and even supply chain management.

Even basic skills like filling out formal applications and writing resumes can be daunting for young people before they begin to do them, he said. “Those are skills that we think as adults, ‘Why don’t they know how to do that?’ But kids don’t know how to do that.”

High school staff will help students develop resumes and prepare in other ways that make them workplace ready, Guseman said.

The schedule is to have applications into the CED by Feb. 16. The CED will work with employers to offer internships in April. Internships will start after school lets out in May.