Ricket, Yahn, & Bentley: Rural High School Internships
In Rural Community and Career Connected Learning: Impacts of High School Internships Prioritizing People and Place, Allison L. Ricket (SROI and Impact Measurement, Ohio University), Jacqueline Yahn (Education, Ohio University), and Emily Bentley (Education Engagement Specialist, Building Bridges to Careers) examine the outcomes of non-school internships hosted by two Appalachian Ohio organizations: Rural Action and Building Bridges to Careers.
This qualitative study, guided by the conceptual framework of community and career-connected learning, seeks to fill a gap in the literature. Whereas existing internship studies tend to originate from a distinctly urban-centric vantage point or focus on optimizing social mobility and developing skills needed to maintain a globalized, unrooted workforce, this research explores whether and how place-based internships can connect rural students to their own home areas.
Rural Action serves fifty-nine Ohio counties working in multiple areas of rural interest to facilitate change by “supporting communities to understand, map, and control their assets.” Building Bridges to Careers focuses on reversing outmigration trends by partnering with local schools to increase community engagement with career awareness. Twenty-five previous program participants were interviewed concerning their perceived role within their rural communities, career pathways, and social capital acquisition. Participants indicated the internship positioned them to establish an initial career trajectory while also leading them to reconsider their role within the community.
An example of the program’s impact is one student who was interested in pursuing media studies in college but thought that jobs in media were not available in their rural area, and thus that such a career path was not economically or practically feasible. The program allowed the student to see others “doing the same thing [they] wanted” in their own rural area.
