Abstract:

Throughout the United States, community colleges are establishing new degree programs and certifications to meet the growing demand by industry for skilled data workers. Analyzing data, spotting patterns, and extracting useful information have become gateway skills to full participation in the workforce and civic engagement of the 21st century. Individuals skilled in the variety of tasks and duties required to acquire, aggregate, clean, organize, and analyze these massive data sets are now in high demand.

Columbus State Community College (CSCC) has led efforts in central Ohio to develop data science programming aimed at preparing students for entry level data worker jobs. In addition to designing an Information Systems & Analytics Associate Degree and a Data Analytics Technician Advancement Certificate, CSCC has partnered with Education Development Center (EDC) to enhance its outreach efforts to local employers of data workers. Key to that outreach effort is the creation of data worker internships for CSCC students. Internships benefit students by offering them immediate opportunities to apply their data skills and knowledge to performing routine tasks and solving problems that challenge data workers in today’s workplaces. Employers benefit from interns as well. Without making long term commitments, employers are able to assess interns as potential employees, evaluating their technical skills, employability and other soft skills such as their ability to solve problems, learn on their feet and adapt to new situations.

Not all employers are aware of these benefits and many are unsure how to go about designing meaningful internships. To assist employers in making the decision to open their companies to student interns, EDC has recently published a Guide for Data Worker Internships. The guide draws upon EDC’s experience assisting community colleges to design data science career pathways and upon interviews with successful operators of data worker internships. The guide walks employers through a reflective process that enables them to design rigorous internships that can contribute to a company’s bottom line, while affording students an invaluable introduction to the workplace.

This presentation will describe the efforts taken by CSCC to develop a big data career pathway and will provide an overview of the Data Worker Internship Guide developed by EDC. The overview will include:
• the key questions employers need to address when considering whether to offer data worker internships;
• strategies employers can use to identify data worker tasks that are suitable for interns;
• sample evaluation tools that employers can use to assess how well interns perform data worker tasks.

A limited number of hard copies of the internship guide will be available for session attendees.

Keywords:

Data analytics programs, careers, work-based learning, internships.