This Summer, Undergraduate Education, the Career Center, and UCR’s Career Readiness Assessment will host the third annual Bridge Experience Internship Program. This internship provides career-related opportunities for UC Riverside students, particularly those from low-income and first-generation backgrounds without previous career-related experience. To scale this internship, the Career Center and the University Innovation Alliance Fellow have successfully secured a $50,000 APLU Collaborative Opportunity grant. This funding enables UC Riverside to expand and improve the program to benefit more students and re-envision the partnership between academics and career.

Twenty UCR students have been selected to take part in this internship program. Interns have the opportunity to develop marketable skills, apply learning to a real-world project, engage in career-related experiences, participate in professional development, and gain mentorship from professionals, faculty, students, and staff. Student interns are currently enrolled in a self-paced coding course through Ohio State University based on Apple’s Swift coding curriculum. Students will receive a certificate of course completion and an opportunity to earn a Swift Certified User Apple certification.  Interns will meet regularly with their peers, employers, UCR faculty, and Career Center staff as well as engage in mentorship meetings with Apple professionals and Apple Campus Leaders.Students will work in multidisciplinary teams for a five-week summer internship. Students will apply their newly developed coding skills and utilize design thinking to evaluate the business demands of local area businesses and build an iOS application concept to meet these requirements. The project will culminate in a presentation by the interns to campus and community stakeholders presenting their application design.

Program data has revealed increases in students’ confidence, sense of belonging, and community; intrinsic motivation to begin career readiness; improved communication and teamwork; articulation of career skills; identification of career skills needing improvement; direct engagement with employers and expanding mentor networks; plus, an increased interest in pursuing local career opportunities. For more information on Swift, Apple’s coding, please contact Sean H. Gil, Director – Career Center.