Just before the current school year began, Chandler Unified School District added a Career and Technical Education course designed to give students internship opportunities, but a lot of the details still needed to be worked out.

Tiffany Bellows was hired to oversee it.

However, education employee contracts start with the fiscal year. So her first day was July 1. Classes began 15 days later.

“Yeah, I was very busy,” Bellows said.

She gave the Governing Board an update on the program at its April 22 meeting.

Despite her short lead time, the MIC500 course appears to be off to a fast start, with enrollment for next year expected to grow by 330%.

MIC stands for Mentorship, Internship and Careers. It is a capstone course within the district’s CTE program. It is only for students who have completed their primary CTE course program.

Students from the district’s six high schools can enroll. The first few weeks of the course, they learn life skills that will help them in the professional world.

Those skills should be beneficial no matter which career they are interested in pursuing, from culinary arts to cybersecurity.

“We had six teachers, one at each high school, that raised their hand without knowing too much about what this course is going to turn into, and they’ve been rocking it,” Bellows said.

During the initial classes, students learn about teamwork, finances, interviewing, and learning how to make an elevator pitch.

“They’re practicing with classmates, but not applying it quite yet,” Bellows said. “When we started to do interviews with businesses, and then actually work with them, you kind of realize how important it really is.”

Each student must find an internship in their chosen career path and work at least 130 hours over the course of the school year. Those internships can be paid or unpaid. Bellows said 16% of the 24 students in the initial class are being paid.

The MIC500 teachers check in with each intern’s supervisors and collectevaluations on their performance. That will help determine the grade they will earn for the course.

Students must also submit written reflections on their internships.

Bellows said so far, the class has been a success, with both students and the businesses that have given them internships happy with the results.

“Businesses love the professionalism of the students, their ability to demonstrate their skills and learn new ones and their availability during the workday,” Bellows said. “The majority of businesses say they would host again.”

Students must be a junior or senior, at least 16 years of age, and it is recommended they have transportation so they can get to their host business.

Upperclassmen also tend to have free hours to help them find time for their internships. They also must have earned their credential in whichever CTE course they pursued.

And the word-of-mouth from the current students has helped sell the class to others.

As of mid-April, 163 students completed an interest survey about possibly taking next year’s course. The district wanted to know which fields they want to do an internship in so they could reach out to local businesses willing to host a student.

Bellows said she has secured 137 internship opportunities from 94 business partners for next year. If a student cannot get an internship by the end of the first semester, they must drop the course.

CUSD has nearly two dozen CTE courses that cover a variety of occupations.

Some of them include digital photography, early childhood education and sports medicine.

She said the biggest need for additional partners is in the more professional ranks, which may be a little more hesitant about a high school intern.

“Bioscience is one,” Bellows said of businesses students are looking to intern at. “Possibly, film and TV, engineering, probably a few in software. I’d say any of the truly professional ones, because they’re a little bit more nervous about high school interns.”

One field they don’t need more businesses in is social media. Apparently, many businesses think hiring students to update their social media accounts is a good idea.

“I don’t have enough students for that,” Bellows said.