In 2024, nearly 25 local high school students gained work experience through an internship program at the Malheur Education Service District.
The Malheur Works Student Internship Program, which started in 2021, aims to give high school students their first experience in a full-time job the summer before their senior year.
Brian Bond, program coordinator at the education service district, said the program has grown from a start of 10 students to 23 in 2024.
Bond said the program is a collaboration between the education service district, the Eastern Oregon Workforce Board, the Frontier STEM Hub and Oregon State University.
Funded by private employers and grants, the program has three elements: paid work experience, mentorship and a series of professional workshops to bolster students’ skills over the summer.
In addition to gaining the experience of working a full-time job, Bond said, students meet regularly with volunteer mentors. Mentors help students learn how to navigate issues that come up in a work setting, from showing up to work on time to communicating well with a supervisor.
He said he checks in with mentors regularly to see how the students are.
The mentors, he said, are “community professionals” and are not affiliated with the organizations where the students are interning. He said the purpose behind selecting outside mentors is to allow students to share freely without any fears of repercussion.
Along with the paid work experience and mentorship, Bond said the students attend regular workshops that cover career exploration, resume building and personal finance, among others.
The students last summer came from Ontario, Nyssa, Vale and Harper high schools, and they were spread across jobs at almost 20 organizations, including private businesses and government entities, Bond said.
The businesses included Vale’s CAPS Auto Truck, U.S. Silica, and Campbell Electric, among others.
“At the end of the day, the program is about improving student outcomes, improving student success,” Bond said. “We just want to see those students be successful.”
Connie Huston, owner of Ogawa’s Sushi, Burgers, and Bowls restaurant in Fruitland, said she has had two interns from the Malheur Works program over the last couple of years.
At the end of their nine-week internships, Huston said she offered both interns permanent positions with the restaurant while they attended Treasure Valley Community College. She said that one of those former interns is still working at Ogawa’s while the other moved on to a four-year university to complete her degree.
Having interns has been a good experience for Ogawa as a business and for the students to get their “foot in the door” and gain work experience, Huston said.
She said the student who started as an intern washing dishes is now training as a sushi chef after learning to work different positions at the restaurant.
“We cross-train in our business,” she said. “The students have opportunities to move around and learn different positions.”
Brayan Velazquez-Lopez, a former intern at the Frontier STEM Hub who graduated from Ontario High School in 2024, is in his first year at Western Oregon University. Velazquez-Lopez, 19, a pre-education major, said his goal is to become an elementary school teacher.
A program assistant at the Frontier STEM Hub, he said his duties included organizing summer career events at TVCC for incoming first-year students and creating lesson plans. He said his time as an intern helped him cultivate his communication, collaboration and adaptability skills “all just by showing up to the job.”
During its first year, Yolanda Diaz, a Nyssa graduate, was an intern for the Malheur Works program at the education service district. Diaz graduated from Nyssa High School in 2021 and said the internship aligned with her interest in social work. She earned a bachelor’s degree in social work at George Fox University and is now working on a graduate degree in social work at Northwest Nazarene University.
Diaz said she plans to pursue a career in mental or community health. “Because of the program,” she said. “I definitely have options.”
News tip? Send your information to Steven Mitchell at [email protected].
WE CAN’T DO THIS FOR FREE – The Malheur Enterprise delivers quality local journalism – fair and accurate. We depend on support through subscriptions to deliver our reports. You can read it any hour, any day with a digital subscription. Read it on your phone, your Tablet, your home computer. Click subscribe – $7.50 a month.
