UCM’s Missouri Innovation Campus Celebrates 13 Years of Success with Paid Internships for Students

As students return to school this fall, approximately 50 young people participating in the University of Central Missouri’s Missouri Innovation Campus (MIC) program are also gaining hands-on job experience through long-term internships with the area’s top companies.

While many internships involve short-term commitments with limited or no financial compensation, the MIC program students commit to paid, year-round, three-year internships that begin during their high-school years.

The nationally recognized Missouri Innovation Campus program offers a unique opportunity for motivated students to earn a bachelor’s degree in high-demand areas just two years after graduation from high school. This affordable, accelerated degree program is a partnership involving UCM, the Lee’s Summit R-7 School District, Metropolitan Community College and more than 65 industry-leading business partners.

“The internships not only help remove the skills gap between education and employment,” said Stan Elliott, MIC program director, “they also give companies the opportunity to ensure that the intern is a solid fit for their company culture.”

Since the program’s start, a total of 90 percent of the graduates go on to work full time with the company where they interned.

Now in its 13th year, the MIC program provides students with a pathway to a college degree with little or no debt thanks to both the paid internships and the fact that students begin the program during high school – which eliminates room-and-board costs.

All MIC program participants join the MIC program the summer after their sophomore year in high school at the Lee’s Summit R-7 School District’s Summit Technology Academy where they are enrolled in the following high-demand programs – Big Data and Business Analytics, Cybersecurity, Digital Electronics/Engineering Technology/Design and Drafting, Software Development/Computer Science, Software Engineering and Computer Information Systems.