Episode 2 - Micro Internships

[00:00:07] Speaker A: Hello, I am Brian Stewart Kendall campus President. And welcome to Kendall Speaks. Today I have a very impressive group of faculty with me and Kendyl Speaks is going to talk about our micro internship programs. So with me today is School of Business Chairperson Alexis Portuando, chairperson of the School of engineering and technology, Dr. Zhang, and Chris Kennard, Senior Associate professor of School of Engineering and Technology. Welcome. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:00:35] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:00:39] Speaker B: Live studio audience. [00:00:41] Speaker A: That's right, that's right. Nothing but the best for our faculty. So the first thing I want to talk about is let's talk a little bit about yourself. Talk about how you got to Miami Dade College, what was your path to reaches, and we'll start with you. [00:00:53] Speaker C: Thank you so much, Dr. Stewart. So I am from upstate New York, western New York, Rochester, Buffalo area, where I went to school, my undergrad and my grad. I was a super involved student and then I was the super involved graduate student. So I went to school for higher education and completed my degree and then working in residence life from the early part of my career. And when I graduated from my master's in Student personnel Administration, I kind of was like, where do I go next? And so I moved to Florida. I was in Tampa, Florida at the University of South Florida for four years and I worked in residence life. And then after there I was like, do I go back home or do I go, oh, to Miami? Okay, so I went to Miami. I went to the University of Miami for three years, continuing in residence life, and I was working with faculty there. [00:01:44] Speaker D: So. [00:01:45] Speaker C: So I got more of a connection to the academic side in that role as well. And then when I was time for me to leave, um, and live off campus, I got a job as a Communities of Interest Manager at Miami Dade College with the School of Global Business. And that was very much a hybrid role of my background in student affairs and my transitioning to academic affairs. And so then when four years into that position, the position of chairperson opened up at MDC Kendall Campus. And it really was just kind of a natural progression for me to get there and really bring both my passion for working with students and student success and developing strong academic programs and working with great faculty members together into one. And so that's how I got here from Livonia, New York, small town to big Miami. [00:02:37] Speaker A: Wow. Well. Well, that's a great story. Being on the student development side and dorms and that kind of thing. And then now coming to academics. That's a unique pathway. Most people spend one side or the other. [00:02:47] Speaker C: Yeah, no, and I carry it with me. So I have a different lens when I'm working with students still in the academic side because I know that other part to them that is the holistic student. So I really do know the other side. That's why I feel I have a little more empathy sometimes because I know there's more to it. [00:03:05] Speaker A: I'm glad to know that that helps me understand. I can definitely see that in the. [00:03:08] Speaker C: Way you work with students. [00:03:09] Speaker A: Well, welcome. Glad to have you here. And how long have you been chair? [00:03:12] Speaker C: Four years, since 2019. So we're getting. We're getting to five years. Wow. [00:03:18] Speaker A: So you're a Covid chair? [00:03:20] Speaker C: I am. I was very much a Covid chair. So Covid. I was interim for a minute and then March and during COVID right before we went remote, they're like, here, sign here. And I was. It was like official then, so. [00:03:31] Speaker A: All right, well, welcome. Glad to have you. [00:03:32] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:03:33] Speaker A: Dr. Zhang, tell us your story. How did you find your way to Miami Dade College Kendall campus? [00:03:37] Speaker D: Sure. Well, first, I'm trained as an engineer. I have a background in biomedical engineering. So it never occurred to me that I'll be in a higher ed administration for so many years. But this is what life takes me here. I got my first opportunity to work on a federal grant funded project at a private university, St. Thomas University, to help improve the STEM education for elementary school students to work with the teachers and school district. I guess I did good. So I got recommendation from the dean of School of Science back at that time from Miami Dade College for her recommendation to me to be able to take on a director's position for another federal grant to help students that are underrepresented in the STEM field to be more successful. And then it just kept rolling. I was grant director for three different all Department of Education projects. So the last one was to help students to be more successful in intermediate algebra. It is to help students more successful to be in intermediate algebra. And we were the one or we were the guilty ones that created the MAT1990L lab for MAT 1033. [00:05:10] Speaker C: Now I remember that. Yes, that's where we first connected. [00:05:13] Speaker D: Exactly, exactly. Because our first group of cohorts were business student and then moved on to health science students. So that was a five year project. But it's a calling from home for me when the chairperson's position for NTECH opened up and I feel very at home. I am actually a Covid chair because I took on the position in mid August of 2020. [00:05:44] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:05:45] Speaker D: One week before we came to campus yes. So it's been a little bit over four years for me at this department, so people might not even realize that, but School of NTECH actually takes up two letters in the word stem. We're engineering and technology. [00:06:04] Speaker A: That's right. [00:06:05] Speaker D: So I feel very much at home. I feel I'm still continuing with my adopted passion to help students to be more successful in stem, particularly in engineering and technology. Of course, I also oversee architecture. I love them just as much. [00:06:26] Speaker A: Well, very good. The grant part really helped you cut your teeth, I think, on what you're doing today, because there's a lot to say about running grants and your math grant hits class to my heart. Being a math guy, I've done a lot of math redesign, and so maybe we need to team up and talk about that sometimes. Well, so glad to have you both here. I want to say from the bottom of my heart how important chairs are at this college. And you two do a great job. And we're honored to have you here because you do a lot of the work that this place doesn't work without you two guys. So appreciate you so much. [00:06:53] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:06:54] Speaker D: Thank you. [00:06:54] Speaker A: Well, with us next to represent the faculty. So you're representing all the faculty today. [00:06:59] Speaker C: Just for now in the world. [00:07:01] Speaker A: Professor Chris Kinnar, tell us about your path to Miami Dade College. [00:07:04] Speaker B: Thank you. Yes, I work with or Dr. Zhang is my chair in tech here at the Kendall campus. I teach networking and cybersecurity mostly. And long story short, I don't really have a formal education. As you know, in college I was an English major, journalism major. So I definitely could say I can appreciate being able to get something like an internship experience, because I didn't get that. I really had to do a lot of on the job training, really, which is something that I sorely missed out on. So I can definitely reach out and see to the students and express to them the importance of things like not only do you want to, you know, go to class, but any chance you can to get out there in the field and get hands on training, take it. [00:07:46] Speaker A: Very good. All right, let's talk a little bit about micro internships. Chair Portuando, tell us a little bit about the micro internship program. And I believe it started in the business area, did it not? [00:07:56] Speaker C: Yes, it did. Yes, it did. Exactly. And so now a year and a half ago, I would say where we've done three full main term semesters with our micro internships, there was a need for the micro internship and micro. I don't want it to be misleading in that it's small, it's just small in duration. So it's a 40 hour internship as opposed to maybe 150 hour internship you might see in a full semester internship course or more traditional internship. But the micro internship is a project based internship experience. So it's not the get your coffee, pick up my dry cleaning internship, it's the do a specific project and see from start to finish your portion of a project that can help the company that you're with improve, move forward, et cetera. And so it gives the students a tangible experience to the workforce that they wouldn't have otherwise had, which is essential. We're the School of Global Business, we're a business department. And putting students in the workplace is what we do. And this is giving them that practical experience before the quote, unquote, real world. Because they're in the real world right now. A lot of our students are working. And so this gives them something different. It might not be a position that they would have had the chance to, had exposure to otherwise. [00:09:26] Speaker A: And the student does this internship toward the end of the semester. Right? [00:09:29] Speaker C: So yeah, that's a, that's a great question. So essentially how it's structured is we have the internship linked with a course. The course we've identified is our Principles of Business GEB 1011 course. And students typically take that course their first or second semester in their time here at MDC. And so we want to get them that experience early. There's benefits to that. And them taking it in the class early is that they're learning like, yes, I really love business. This is for me, I want to do this. But then also the shadow side to that is that maybe business isn't for them and they want to go into education, psychology or, or other great majors that they have. So they're figuring it out for themselves then instead of just spending their whole time in a major that they really didn't connect to. But in the class itself, we have it structured. So in a full term, the first half of the semester is packed full of the course material that you would see in a typical course. But then the second half, the project base, is where the internship fits. And that's when students have about five to eight weeks to do 40 hours in total. So it could be, you know, five to eight hours a week that they do with the company based on whatever schedule they work out with with the company and themselves. [00:10:50] Speaker A: Just for my benefit. At the end of that, do you have them present back? Because I'd love to see the presentation. [00:10:55] Speaker C: Yeah, I know that would be great. So currently we really wanted to get started and we wanted to make it as simplified as possible in the process so there isn't a presentation back. However, we do get updates and weekly reports from students until like their completion of the hours and the time. [00:11:16] Speaker A: That's good, that's very Good. [00:11:17] Speaker C: Yes. [00:11:17] Speaker A: So Dr. Zhang, tell us a little bit of how it's designed in intech, the micro intake. [00:11:21] Speaker D: Sure. Based on the school of business successful model inner pilots, we decided to take this opportunity on and implement the micro internship with CTLC 1134, my networking technology course, which is a entry level course for any student that are interested in networking, cybersecurity, these kind of technology programs. So this is one of the in field entry level course that student will take. So students just were given this micro internship opportunity to get their hands dirty because as a tech major graduates it'll be embarrassing if you go to an on site, work a real job without knowing where you can find switches to equipment. Which was actually a real feedback that we received a few years ago from a employer. So the micro internship will provide us a great opportunity to address that early on. And also the great benefit for this micro internship program is not only for the student to start early, it also costs nothing for our collaborator, the employers. Because this is an unpaid internship opportunity, students don't get paid. But because this is built into their curriculum so they get the experience as a part of their learning. [00:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the point is that they know when they graduate that they've had experience that they can put on their resume. That's wonderful. [00:13:06] Speaker D: That's right. [00:13:06] Speaker A: So if each of you will now talk a little bit about an example of the kind of work they do in these micro internships. [00:13:12] Speaker C: Yeah, very cool. So they get to do a gamut of exercises or projects with the companies, depending on the company specifically. So just generally they could do research for a new project, they could propose solutions to current problem, do some market research, learn more about competitors type of deal, which is a benefit to employers. As a side note, because we have access, the students have access to the library resources within learning resources with databases galore where they can really do some good research for them. If they utilize that, they could develop support materials, gather feedback to critique and improve like the company's website, potentially create budgets for projects, plan events. That's something that students would get experience with, is also something just with getting feedback from their patrons kind of thing and then really create any sort of new project that they might have a need for. [00:14:08] Speaker A: That's very good, very good. Professor Kennard, you want to talk a little bit about an intech? [00:14:12] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. And the CTS 1134 class, again being a networking technologies entry level. What's nice about the micro internship model is again being, as Alexis said, it can be very modular. So you know, breaking it out over a 40 hours. [00:14:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I like that you said that. You said that a lot better than I did. So how about the modular kind of. [00:14:31] Speaker B: Right. So you know, and that, and that really helps us chunk it out according to maybe course curriculum. So it really helps us, you know, the students can attach meaning back to the class and then it can be a very, you know, a simple project versus it can be very intimidating. Just go out to an internship and especially in it, they could be put in front of a rather complex environment. So as long as we communicate to whoever the direct report or manager is going to be, for example, and I don't want to get off, go over the nerd cliff here, but let's say the chapter had talked about do you know how to make a network cable? So they would make that one of the projects that they do and all the way out to setting up operating systems, doing some simple network troubleshooting. And then I did create what I told the students and their direct report manager was we needed a deliverable. I said I need you to come back with something that I can turn into a grade. So and again, as Alexis said, you know, half the semester we had to front load, you know, a four credit class into eight weeks. That also gives us enough time to handle logistics of that gives us eight weeks to reach out to the employers and make sure everybody understands the expectations, what not to expect. So that's, that's a very busy first eight weeks. Then in the second eight weeks, hopefully they've covered everything and then each week they've got a little project they can be working on and I made that half of the grade, you know, so I tried to very much tie it back into the students to say each week you have to find out what are you doing, take a screenshot of it, journal something down, document something and get that all back to us at the end of the semester. [00:16:02] Speaker A: That's great to both of you. Talk a little bit about how the program helps students beyond the technical skills and you kind of hit on it, Chris. But talk a little bit more about how this can help them, you know, down the road in the future as they. [00:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah, the whole idea and unfortunately a lot of the misconception coming into It. I can't say the same for business necessarily, but they want to think, well, it's just going to be me in front of a computer. I don't have to have people skills. I don't have to collaborate with others. I don't have to know how to open an email attachment. So we definitely took that time to make sure that the students got, you know, we just want to say soft skills, organizational working groups, being able to. And I guess I'll digress a little bit. This may come up later. So forgive me, but we had a third person who was sort of the. I called it our, like our certified cad herder. But we. We had a third person because I didn't want the students to feel like, well, the professor, the big scary professor in the front of the room was the only person that they could talk to or they could try to get out of doing something by saying, well, you know, I want extra credit, you know. So we set up a liaison that they constantly had to report to. So back to the question of that. Even as an intangible, they had to learn how to step out of the classroom, talk to this liaison, coordinate with their manager, direct report boss, and then I would go out to those people. So I wanted to remove myself from that part of the equation and let them really experience this as if it were more of a professional workplace environment. [00:17:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a great answer in the real world aspects. And soft skills are things we hear all the time from employers. And so I think that's a great. A great addition. What about in the business, Alexis? [00:17:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. So again, this was created out of the need. So there's a need from the student side and the need from the employer side for this sort of gap of development because they want to help grow the talent pipeline in the sense of making sure they're stronger, more equipped to be in the workplace. And so this gives them that chance to see potential employees that could be like students as interns, but then could be potential employees. But for the students, the definite clear benefit for them is that work experience and the need is there in the sense of they were lacking skills. So if you talk to industry, they'll share like, you know, yeah, they're great employee. However, maybe their presentation skills aren't there. And so we're doing a disservice if we're having students graduate without the comfortable or confidence to present themselves, because that's what they're going to be doing in any sort of business. They're going to have to interact and share some sort of information to some other party. And if they're not able to do that, then that's on us. And so we want to make sure we're giving them opportunities to do so. So one of our partners, Brown and Brown Insurance, they actually do require a presentation from their interns that are matched with them to work on and present to their company and their executives. So that's a great opportunity for students. And we've had great feedback and results from that specifically. [00:19:00] Speaker A: That's great. That's wonderful experience that they get. Dr. Zhang, talk a little bit about what support students get during the micro internship. [00:19:08] Speaker D: Sure. I also want to follow up with the remarks before for the prior question. So we also benefit from the migrant internship from the feedback provided by the employers to help us to shape our curriculum based on the actual need from the business and also the community. So for the kind of support, of course, the student, just like Professor Kanara said, we have a whole team to assist the student, including the professor in the classroom. We have a designated advising staff that actually acts as the liaison between student, professor and the employer and also the internship supervisor on site. That's also an important key stakeholder in this school of ntech also have a designated MDC works staff that's designated to assist students from the School of Ed Tech. And before the student goes out to the employer to do their micro internship, they receive training on their work ethic, on even how they should dress and present themselves. [00:20:30] Speaker C: Yeah, and definitely with business too. Micro internship, it's so great. It's filled with so many benefits that it's. It's hard to encapsulate. So they get individual resume workshops on professional development. They get headshots with the media services team here so they can have a portfolio like headshot for their LinkedIn or whatever the need might be. They have opportunities to do certifications with hootsuite and with a WIX portfolio. So they're getting just all this other. The supplemental development that they wouldn't get in a regular class without the micro internship component. And the holistic support that we were talking about. We have an advisor with the academic and career advisor coach. They have one for their class specifically. So that's great attention that they can have. And so if there's any sort of issues that come up that they have that support, if they need support with getting like transportation to these internship sites, we work to help get them a bus pass so that that's not an obstacle for them or at a cost to Them. And so those are things that we do just like, you know, above and beyond to help our students because we want them to be successful in this endeavor as it is. We know that it is additional, but we also know that it is essential. [00:21:43] Speaker A: Chris, you were gonna add something there. [00:21:45] Speaker B: One super cool benefit, but I'm just gonna toot my department's own horn here is we were able to sort of leverage the fact that a lot of former students are now working within the college's IT and networking administration. So it was very easy, well, I guess you know, to reach out to them and say, you sat in this room, I was your professor, you know what we do in this class. And they said, oh yeah, don't worry, exactly what kind of a project to give to the student based on when you were our professor. So thank you very much. And then even, even cooler was at the business school's closing ceremony, they did this. Let's introduce the new technology micro internship. And they introduced the employers we were going to be working with. And afterwards one of them came up to me and he's shaking my hand and he said, well, don't you remember me, Professor? [00:22:32] Speaker C: How funny. [00:22:33] Speaker B: So this company, you know, he was a CEO of his own company. He had taken some of networking classes and decided, this is what I want to do. Went out and started his own company and then hired our students to work as interns with him. I was like, this is it, this is the pipeline. And again, being able to go to people and say, you remember being a student, can you create projects that are going to mimic what they saw in this class? A big challenge. We have a company may just want to hand them the keys and say, please go build out our server and cybersecurity infrastructure. It's like, okay, tap the brakes here a little bit. So we were able to really hone in on exactly what kind of projects we wanted to be. And again, back to the micro internship model. They can be a one and done. You can do just a five hour project. It was low stakes, light touch, get in, get out, you know, and it was just a very easy way to deliver for the students to learn, for us to report back and eventually even grade. [00:23:27] Speaker C: I love it. [00:23:28] Speaker A: That's a great story. Especially, you know, you're successful when your students come out and come back to you and support your program. That's, that's a great story. [00:23:34] Speaker B: I need a radio patting myself on. [00:23:36] Speaker A: That's allowed. That's allowed, yeah. In business, talk a little bit about your students and how the community aspect of it works. [00:23:45] Speaker C: So what's been great is that Miami is full of small businesses. We really are like a hub for entrepreneurs. And so there's a lot of opportunities to partner with companies that do need the additional support because they're not some large corporation. A lot of nonprofits that we partner with. And so we're out there. We are doing a webinar with the Greater Miami Chamber coming up to promote growing our internship availability and experiences for our students, which we're really pumped about. We're going to have a student testimonial during that event, and we'll hear firsthand from the student and how much he really did benefit from the experience. And so the community is very much a fiber, a part of the fabric of Miami Dade College just in general. And so we are very closely linked with our industry partners. [00:24:37] Speaker A: You'll be happy to know that in the webinar you talked about has been out there, I think, a week, and 59 individuals. [00:24:44] Speaker C: That's amazing. [00:24:44] Speaker A: Businesses have signed up. [00:24:45] Speaker C: That's amazing. That's amazing. And it's worth it. And all 59 of them will benefit from it. So, I mean, that's great news. I'm really happy about that. [00:24:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm excited for that. Now in tech, we do it a little different model. You guys are working with the Miami Dade College IT department. Talk a little bit about how that works and how that's organized, and then maybe going into any specifics of that that might help our audience. [00:25:08] Speaker B: Okay, I can go ahead and start with that. So sort of leading off what I was saying before, we do know a lot of the people, so we, especially at the Kendall campus, I don't want to get into a big backstory, but we have our district IT here, as well as our campus network services, although I guess recently they've been more closely aligned. But we do have a lot of different areas that students can go into. So a part of what we do in the first eight weeks is we distribute a survey to the students to find out within it. Within ntech, you might be taking networking for a half a dozen reasons. So we try to capture that data to find out, are you cyber, are you cloud? Where is it that you go? So that we can then go out. Since we have the benefit of it being such a large, varied IT operation, we've got lots of different places that we can put students from help desk all the way out to potentially software. I don't want to put words in their mouths, but there's lots of different areas. I just Put it that. So that is a great added benefit, particularly at this campus, particularly that Miami Dade represents what a lot of my networking students learn is what we would call an enterprise. So if they really want to see networking at that scale, we can give that to them. We can bring it all the way back to individual PC troubleshooting. So we can go as large or as small as we need to, depending on what the student identifies as what they're interested in and what the college's needs are. [00:26:32] Speaker A: That's a great point. Being in such a large institution like we are, we have so many different opportunities. As you said, that really gives a student a leg up when they leave Miami Dade College to go into the workforce and go from there. [00:26:43] Speaker C: So with what Professor Kennard was saying, I really want to mention also the professors that I've been able to work with on the global business side. So Dr. N. Smith, she was instrumental in working with the students and really helping them throughout, like you're mentioning, is engaging where they're at kind of thing. So that support really, really launched the program, truly. And now, moving forward, we're excited to work with a newer faculty, an adjunct professor, Larry Kravis. He's amazing, too. He has great energy. He was a business owner of a company in Miami that was here for a little while, and so he has a wealth of experience to bring to the table. And just really, the faculty make it happen because they're the anchor in the classroom to making sure they touch base with the students and everything throughout the time. So the faculty have been truly instrumental in this whole ordeal. [00:27:36] Speaker A: My favorite part is mentioning faculty. So I want to give you guys a fair chance. Any faculty you want to give a shout out to that have really helped our program, I want to give a. [00:27:44] Speaker B: Shout out to Alexis. [00:27:44] Speaker C: Allow me. [00:27:45] Speaker A: Okay, Dr. Zhang. [00:27:46] Speaker D: First for Alexis to say exactly what I wanted to say. This program will not be happening without our very dedicated faculty. [00:27:57] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:27:58] Speaker D: Yes. [00:27:59] Speaker C: Yeah, it needs to happen, because all faculty are amazing, but not all have the same ability to do what you do to make this happen, because it's extra. [00:28:09] Speaker B: And hats off to you for being able to work with adjunct faculty that could bring in a challenge all itself. When I picture the Venn diagram of. We want to say why am I now in this podcast? And it's sort of like one circle was we needed the right class. Another circle was we needed at the right time of day. And then the last was sort of like, well, where's Professor Kennard today? And then so it sort of lame. So There is no way that I sit here and say that this is successful because of what I did. I mean, there and other things that happened in that first eight weeks. We were able to bring. I'm going back to the last question now. But we were able to bring members of the IT staff to come in and give presentations, which was great. So that, that way, you know, each of the different five areas that we tried to capture in the survey, we brought people in to give presentations. So they were able to just walk over essentially on a lunch break from their office and, and give a presentation. So hats off to the flexibility for the IT staff. I mean, it is not an easy task to say, let's bring in a student who's taking a 1000 level networking class and asking them to give some kind of module of curriculum to them. And they embraced it. The MDC works all the way down through the advisors that we had. The last person in the chain was, I was just taking all this stuff and putting the last little finishing piece on it. That, that was really it. But I mean, if, you know, for a program like this to work, it is one of those taking a village kind of operations. Just for anybody who wants to bring this out into another program, don't just hand it to somebody and walk away. [00:29:37] Speaker C: It's not a giveaway kind of thing. Yeah, it really does need that nurturing. [00:29:42] Speaker A: I've asked this question, we've talked a little bit about workforce, but I want, in case anyone wants to add anything else, talk about anything else that this micro internship can do to help our students in the workforce. Anything we missed, I think we've all touched on it. [00:29:56] Speaker C: So, I mean, the benefits for the students are there in getting the experience, but the benefits to the employers, they're getting assistance for a project that they might not have already been able to do, something they could have been putting off because of their limited resources. Potentially they could be training potential future hires by getting them for 40 hours to like prep them before they're starting working again, because that 40 hours is unpaid. And so the academic benefit. So moving forward, they already have a head start. They're getting a chance to give back and mentor and shape their future workforce, which is essential and really expanding their own partnerships within the community to give back to such an amazing institution such as Miami Dade College Kendall Campus. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Good advertisement. [00:30:42] Speaker C: I like that. Yes. [00:30:43] Speaker A: Anything from your perspective. [00:30:45] Speaker D: So the key word for this project is micro. So it's not very long and unpaid, but I think the other very important factor is it's done in an entry level course. So student can take this immersive 40 hour experience to really fill this out and decide whether it is for them, especially for our course, which is an entry level course for a in discipline course. So this really gives them the opportunity if they're on the fence or if they're still deciding they still have the opportunity, it's not too late for them to consider alternatives. [00:31:26] Speaker A: Right. They can go through the course and hopefully get fired up for it. So looking forward, if you pull out your crystal balls and I'm going to pull out mine right now, one of the things I want to do is have another podcast with you guys towards the end of this semester with students. I'd love to bring a couple of students that you think are modeled and I think that would be a great post interview here. But looking in your crystal balls, if you could look at the future, where would you like to see the micro internship, you know, in the next years, two years, whatever. Whatever you want to envision. [00:31:55] Speaker B: I can start. I was giving a presentation over the summer at a conference in Kansas City and I put together this wonderful presentation. Then when I got out there I realized I had everything except data. And so my PowerPoint had a lot of pictures, but I realized that so. And they've now asked me to come back and give the presentation again next year. So I realized I'm going to come back with some data this time. So what you need to do. And again, this is something that's going to take that entire village of people. But you've got, you know, say I've got my deliverable that I get from the students. We've got the survey at the beginning. We also need to maybe have the students do an exit interview, which maybe everyone else and I just didn't think about it until everybody walked out the door. So do an exit interview like employer with stud. Do an exit interview of staff with employer so that you can capture data different ways. And that's definitely where we're going to be able to work off of those lessons that we can learn. Otherwise, we're going to start this up and keep reinventing that wheel. [00:32:54] Speaker A: Dr. Zhang, anything you'd like to add? [00:32:55] Speaker D: Yeah, just like what Professor Canard said, we need to collect best practices and lessons learned from our pilots. And then also hopefully if we're going to roll this out to more courses or more disciplines, it has to be manageable given our limited manpower and physical limitations to work off of that. [00:33:22] Speaker B: If we want to make this some way to recruit Kabiz you know, off the record, I would say right now, some of the students find out they're in this micro internship because they sign up for the class and then they get an email saying, welcome to the micro internship. And we realize that now. So if we want to achieve success at scale, right, word of mouth will spread. Maybe a million people listen to this podcast. And we need to be able to have management at that kind of scale or otherwise. Right now, it's just not, you know, we can make it work with 20 students. We want to roll this out to 250 students. We're going to have to hire 250 more. And. And that's not what we want. So we need to have ways to use some of the maybe internal systems that we have to sort of pull all this together, and then we can really see this go out to that next level. [00:34:07] Speaker D: I feel that we're still taking the baby steps for these kind of courses, especially our class. We offer four different sections of this class in a major semester, and Professor Kennard is one of the four. So student will have limited options if they want to opt out. And also we are working with a limited group of students on that. So the scalability, we have to admit, not every professor will be on board doing this. And we only have one and only Professor Kanar. And also I wanted to just put it out here. Business and entech, we run very different courses. So eventually it's inevitable we are going to develop our own best practices based on our own unique course offerings. [00:35:03] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:35:04] Speaker D: So, yeah, we're still in a exploring developmental stage. [00:35:08] Speaker B: And I would say, and this is not putting out a commercial, I don't work for them, but part of the research. I don't know if you've all heard the organization called Parker Dewey. So they are sort of the Microsoft of micro internship. So it's sort of like a clearinghouse, you might say, where an employer and a student get matched through this website. Could Miami Dade have something where all of a sudden these employees we've worked in the past, all of a sudden say, I have a module. Another employer says, I have a module. Does a student necessarily have to say, I worked with employer X? Could all of a sudden they say, I did my 40 hours. Because we had some environment portal where the students could go and say, you know, and grab. And then that way we could keep leveraging all these partnerships and back to the whole benefit of micro internships. They can get one and then they can get out and the employer can grab them for one and they don't have to have this big massive investment of time and then they find out too late. I didn't want to go there anyway. So just something for what might we want to consider down the road to really make this, you know, a larger scale implementation. [00:36:09] Speaker C: So yeah, so many things running through my head now. But we had a student actually their first semester, he did a with construct with a construction site, his micro internship with a construction company that was working at one of our campuses actually. And on the management end of it, he finished his internship and he wanted to do it again. He's like, I want another one. [00:36:30] Speaker A: Wow. [00:36:30] Speaker C: And so it was linked to the class and so it was. I was like, sorry, but let's see what we can do. And so that was a really cool story. But with the, with the kind of need lens here is that to make it manageable is we put a lot of investment into what we do. So we are matching our students. So myself and the advisor, we interviewed all the students in the class to see where they would be the best fit. So if I have a company that is doing events or marketing or HR or accounting or finance, then we're matching the student with that. So it's a 10 minute interview just to get to know the student and what they're passions are. And so we do the best we can. But it's really helped to do that initial interview matching so that students are placed where they have an interest in being. But that's consuming. And so to do that and then to do that at scale with, you know, additional courses, sections of it, it does take a lot of management for that to be as successful as we want it to be. [00:37:34] Speaker A: Well, this has been a great conversation and I have one more question is before we close out the show, talk a little bit about if there's anything that the Kendall campus leadership can do to help support these programs. I know they're both relatively new, but I foresee them being around for a while. And as you mentioned, Chris, we want to look at what the next iteration looks like. But what can the leadership of this campus do to support both micro internship programs? [00:37:56] Speaker C: Yes, and thank you. Well, you're doing it. You're helping get the connections for us to get additional companies on board, helping them to see the benefits of it, which is where the need is because we have the students. And so getting the employers and having that strong connection is really the necessity. If nothing else, that that has to be there. And so now that you're here and you're able to give a fresh perspective to it to the chamber and other organizations to recruit. I think that that's really going to be the biggest driver and showcase it. We need this. [00:38:32] Speaker B: Yeah, we need exposure. So whatever that looks like to the college, the people in this room know about it, our employers know about it, whoever's listening on the podcast knows about it. But let's really get the word out there. [00:38:42] Speaker A: And that's exactly why you're this is, by the way, our second podcast of Kindle Speaks and this was the first one I thought of. We need to get the word out and I think marketing needs to be a part of that too. When we're ready, we need to talk about how to market it and go forward. Dr. Zhang, any final thoughts from your. [00:38:58] Speaker D: I think my colleague said it the best and your support, we already are feeling it and we're in a part of it now. So we just look forward to but that's why the best things that's coming. [00:39:12] Speaker C: It'S been so great because we've had our Dean of Faculty, Dr. Michael Guare, We've had Dr. Vasquez from students. So we've just had, we've had the support as we were growing it and. [00:39:23] Speaker A: We'Re going to continue that support. Well, thank you Thuri, for being here today. Chair Porter Wando, Chair Zhang, Professor Kennard, thank you all for being here today. [00:39:31] Speaker C: Thanks for having me. [00:39:32] Speaker A: It's been a great conversation to our audience. We hope you've enjoyed this. I want to send a special thanks out for those that helped make this Kindle podcast. Our head writer Christina Sanzaguar, our producer, executive producer Paul Klein and our producer Alex Bellows here. Thank you all for being here. Goodbye for now.