Washington Monthly - September/October 2022 - 49

promoted " experiential learning " programs in which students
spent a portion of their sophomore, junior, or senior year working
full-time, usually in their field of study.
The issue, of course, is that these solutions are only readily
available to students affluent enough to be able to take unpaid
or minimum-wage internships. (More than 40 percent of
internships are unpaid, according to the National Association
of Colleges and Employers.) Not being able to take an internship
is a double disadvantage for low-income, first-generation
students, who often don't have family members who can give
them insight into professional career paths or connections to
high-paying employers the way students from middle-class and
wealthier families do.
The process Eddinger and her team used to make Learn
and Earn work better for women and people of color was simple:
They talked to them. What they discovered were economic and
cultural barriers that required very hands-on and tailored interventions
to overcome.
For instance, one student who was working in the college's
business office as an assistant to a staff accountant and who
was graduating with an accounting degree told Austin Gilliland,
dean of professional studies, that he didn't think he qualified for
a Learn and Earn internship. " I was like, 'This is crazy. Why don't
you think you're qualified? Why aren't these things on your résumé?'
" Gilliland told me. " And he said to me that it was against
his culture to brag about his accomplishments. "
Understanding that many students were unsure of themselves
or reluctant to step forward, Bunker Hill, where approximately
one-third of students are the first in their family to go to
college, changed the recruiting process. They removed the grade
point average requirement because it discourages poorer students,
who typically come from less academically rigorous high
schools and often struggle with grades in their first year of college.
(See Rob Wolfe, " The Invisible College Barrier, " page 26.)
And administrators worked with companies to rewrite job postings
so they aligned with course descriptions. Then, instead of
sending a generic email to all students in a particular major informing
them of internship opportunities, they started crafting
personalized messages stressing an individual student's qualifications.
A computer science major, for instance, now receives
a note about a programing internship that says something like
" 'We think you can do this internship because you've taken CSC
236 SQL programming, and that's what this job requires,' " Gilliland,
who oversees Learn and Earn, explained. " We sort of took
that self-selection piece out of it and said, 'We know you have
the skills because you've done this training with us.' "
Administrators also discovered that many students
weren't interested in careers in banking and tech or at a defense
contractor-the types of companies that initially participated in
Learn and Earn. Instead, they aspired to work for small businesses,
nonprofits, government agencies, and other mission-driven
organizations. This presented two problems for the staff. First,
they didn't have many intern placement relationships with such
employers. Second, those organizations typically don't have the
funds to offer decent wages.
Eddinger and her colleagues addressed the second problem
by tapping into an anonymous family foundation specifically
to support intern wages. To solve the first, Gilliland's team set
about diversifying the types of organizations that were participating
in the program.
These adjustments opened the doors of Learn and Earn to
students like Julia Soriano. A first-generation college student,
Soriano interned as a customer service representative with All
In Energy, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing renewable energy
to low-income communities in eastern Massachusetts while also
diversifying the talent pool in the field. The experience taught
her how to communicate in a business environment, work on a
team, and conduct meetings remotely. After graduating in May
2021 with an associate's degree in accounting, Soriano got a fulltime
job at All In, working in their accounting department. She
expects to receive her bachelor's degree in communications and
logistics from Southern New Hampshire University next June.
Low-income, first-generation
students often don't have
family members who
can provide insight into
professional career paths
or connections to highpaying
employers the way
students from middle-class
and wealthier families do.
For Mackenzie Ensley, a fine arts student who enrolled in
Bunker Hill in September 2020, the idea of working in a museum
was so unfamiliar that she hesitated to apply to the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum internship. " When I picture museums,
I picture the part of the art world that intimidates me, " she
told me. " I didn't know if I could be in a position where I would
need to know a lot of things about the materials the art was
made out of or the solvents used to fix the pieces. " But a Bunker
Hill staff member helped Ensley figure out which museum
departments to apply to based on her course work and brainstormed
potential interview questions-support that gave Ensley
confidence she could be successful. (Ensley wound up working
in the Gardner's conservation department, learning how to
write treatment proposals and condition reports-an experience
that led her to pursue art conservation as a career.)
As Bunker Hill administrators expanded the program to
new employers, however, they also had to educate some of them
about the value of accepting interns from different backgrounds
and how to treat them. A second museum, which had to be convinced
to set aside slots for Bunker Hill students, asked appliWashington
Monthly 49
Washington Monthly - September/October 2022

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