Tech Solutions

Spring 2022

Internships

“The internship was the best part of Spark! Not only did it help me learn new skills, it also helped me understand my weak points and the things I should learn before entering the professional world.” - Spark! Associate

The biggest impact on our students comes from immersing them in the work of a real business, and in the past semester, Spark! Tech Solution partners opened up places for 32 interns, the most we’ve had in two years. The internships increased from 6 to 12 weeks in duration, based on partner requests, and we’ve hit a number of fun milestones because of these wonderful organizations.

Two-year Partners

These partners continue to help us iterate this experience, making us better every year. A big thank you to those who have provided opportunities to students the past two years:

Firsts

We’ve also had some firsts this year, including our …

  • First Cross-state internship from AI-powered water management platform Neer.ai, who maintains offices in Kansas City and St. Louis

  • First Cross-country internship with California-based learning company FreeFuse, who sponsored 5 interns, and

  • First Project Management internship with k-to-career workforce training startup, The Mathern Project

Increases

With the growth of the program, these partners stepped up by increasing the roles they invited students to participate in:

  • Sketch Development Services broadened its offerings to include a graphic design internship in addition to their application development interns

  • EDUrain added a UX/UI internship to their web development internship

  • The Parkway School District sponsored 14 of our 32 internships. Parkway Technology placed associates into onsite technology support at two of our high schools, into opportunities with the district’s networking team, and into a programming experience where associates developed custom applications for departmental needs. Parkway Communications sponsored 3 internships in digital communications and sports marketing, telling stories in multiple media over a diverse set of platforms.

Cyber Milestone - Top 10% in National CTF

Our Parkway Spark! cybersecurity CTF teams placed in the top 10% of the 2022 CyberUp PowerUp CyberGames Capture the Flag competition.

Out of 250 participating teams from across the US, ...

  • Our Cyber E team placed #5 in the nation (Ellie Mawuenyega, Dheeraj Bharmnaikar, Yi Zheng, PP)

  • Our Cyber A team placed #13 in the nation (Joshua Wu, Trisha Manna, Manoah Inje, Rishi Yella)


This is a monumental feat for 2 reasons:

  1. A number of the top teams in the competition came from year-long cybersecurity programs, a focus we weren't able to give to this subject this year

  2. Our teams' training was limited to once-a-week 45 minute sessions with their coach. Outside of that, their class time was dedicated to professionalism assignments and working for companies. The coaching time had to count, and then study continued after class.

We could not have come nearly this far were it not for the amazing coaching provided by our PowerUp navigator, Chris Elbring. Year over year, Chris provides a quality of coaching that takes young people relatively new to cyber and skills them up to be among the top performers in this national competition.

Entrepreneurial Technology

What if some associates would rather work for themselves than for someone else? What might that "internship" look like?

This semester, we tried a new pathway: an entrepreneurial approach to technology. Thanks to Worldwide Technology advisors Matt Sauer and David Schenberg, two of our associates, Yusuf Khan and Sindhu Kalabhavi, were able to experience the product design process and compete in the Worldwide Technology Student STEM Forum.

Yusuf and Sindhu started by analyzing problems common to students at their local high school and landed on the need for an easy-to-use and easy-to-update 4-year planning tool. They built a prototype and then hit pause on the project in order to participate in the WWT STEM Forum. The team gathered some amazing learning through the Forum and, at its conclusion, doubled down on their original project. They presented a working product to counselors ahead of the due date.

Many thanks to Worldwide Technology and especially to Matt and David for making this experience possible.