[starbox] With the extreme weather much of the country has been having it isn’t too surprising that many people are daydreaming about summer vacations and relaxing days far from the snow shovel. But another group of people is already thinking of summer for far less relaxing reasons; they are college students in need of summer employment. Ideally that employment would be in their field of study with a company who might be in need of their services after graduation. Until my own children started looking for “internships” I didn’t give much thought to this situation. Sure, I had seen “summer help” in action at various employers but it seemed like they were just being given manual labor tasks like cleaning out storage rooms and landscaping, with maybe a little painting thrown in for variety. I confess to drafting my son into some scut work when he had too long a winter break during his freshman year. The University of Cincinnati’s long tradition of co-op study preempted his need for further dirty work and his sister was wary of more assignments after one vacation of filing purchase orders. My daughter became an advocate for internships after several dismal assignments early in her studies at the University of Illinois. At her urging I learned what made an internship “work” for both the student and the employer. Then I sold the idea to my bosses as a way of getting some long neglected tasks off the Engineering Department things-to-do list. It took some effort on my part and some patience from my staff but that things-to-do list got whittled down by summer’s end. The students learned to apply some “book learning” to real world problems and to present their results before upper management. Several of the kids used their project reports in job interviews. Our company president was impressed enough to authorize another group of interns for winter break. That group got a rave review from him for presenting a unique solution to a capital spending problem worthy of a major consulting firm. So despite the calendar, I encourage those of you who are in a position to offer summer employment to study your things-to-do lists for tasks you can delegate to eager young people. In my next posts I will give some tips on selecting projects, finding interns, and making the internship experience beneficial to everyone involved.