40. Community Need The Miami Valley has identified ten in-demand industries (Manufacturing, Aerospace and Aviation, Automotive, Healthcare, Information Technology, Energy and Chemicals, Financial Services, Food and Agribusiness, Logistics & Transportation, and Military and Federal). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Dayton Region Workforce Portal, almost all these industries show significant projected growth in jobs through 2028. The Miami Valley must begin engaging students as early as possible to ensure they understand the needs of their community.
The State of Ohio directed all children across the State receive career education. Specifically, the Career Connections Framework mandates that children receive Career Awareness (grades K-5), Career Exploration (grades 6-8), and Career Planning (grades 9-12). Every school in the State has determined their own pathway to complete this mandatory requirement. A very small proportion (approximately 1%) of juniors and seniors across the State are receiving Career Planning education that includes a realistic experiential learning experience in their industry of choice. Although, multiple research studies point to career planning being incomplete without an experiential learning engagement. The Miami Valley Intern Academy will address this issue, by giving hundreds of high school juniors and seniors across the Miami Valley an experiential learning opportunity every year.

In addition, last year, the State of Ohio mandated that all schools will engage with their community through a Business Advisory Committee (BAC). Many counties across our region, to include our largest county (Montgomery) has setup a BAC for all the districts across the county. Montgomery and Warren Counties have asked SOCHE to team with them to deliver a world-class experiential learning experience to students in their counties. To ensure students get the best out of their experiential learning, SOCHE will coach and mentor the students through an individual development plan that will ensure the students have gained appropriate employability skills from their experience.

The research indicates that a strong high school experiential learning model has multiple attributes that includes parent, employer and school modules. These modules all complement each other to provide resources to everyone surrounding the student for the best student experience. The Miami Valley Intern Academy will utilize a proven online tool that has been successfully utilized across the Miami Valley for over 40 years - the SOCHEIntern model.

SOCHE has studied the best high school internship models in the country. Specifically, we’ve modeled our Miami Valley Intern Academy after the Boston and San Antonio models who both have thousands of students taking part in experiential learning opportunities every year, either during the school year or in the summer. These world-class high school internship models will be operationalized through the SOCHEIntern online platform.

SOCHE will connect interns with pathways that will guide them to immediate work opportunities after graduation, or to certification or higher education opportunities. The higher education opportunities will lead to more internships that will help students further discern their occupational choices.

SOCHE is a non-profit organization headquartered in Dayton, Ohio that is a consortium of more than 20 colleges and universities. SOCHE’s mission is to be the trusted and recognized regional leader for higher collaboration, working with colleges and universities to transform their communities and economies through the education, employment, and engagement of more than 200,000 students in southwest Ohio. SOCHE’s vision reflects the mission of higher education to create an educated, employed, and engaged citizenry.

Through three decades of partnership, SOCHE has accumulated vast experience and established collaborative relationships to provide interns in support of the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) and the Air Force Research Laboratory Materials and Manufacturing Directorate (AFRL/RX). These longstanding relationships speak to the quality of service provided by SOCHE and success of thousands of student researchers who have been employed by SOCHE over the years.

In 2012, recognizing the strength of the organization’s recruiting and management functions as well as the need to build connections between more area college students and potential employers, SOCHE launched its first internship program outside of WPAFB. The program was created to provide the same internship management services to area businesses and defense contractors in support of their workforce needs. This program also allowed SOCHE to begin working with students from all majors including business administration, accounting, finance, supply chain management, logistics, human resources, and communications, in comparison to existing relationships on WPAFB that focus solely on STEM-student researchers. Since its inception, the program has provided local internship opportunities to hundreds of students representing every major academic program.

In 2017, SOCHE merged with long-time partner, DAGSI (Defense Associated Graduate Student Innovators). DAGSI has been contributing to Air Force research priorities since the early 1990s, funding graduate students and their faculty advisors across Ohio. DAGSI works very closely with the Air Force Research Laboratory to identify graduate level projects for State and AFRL funding. Because of the DAGSI programming, over 70% of funded students remain in Ohio to continue their careers.

Simply stated, SOCHE has the proven experience and the online infrastructure to work with employers to create meaningful experiential learning opportunities for high school and college students that will expose them to in-demand careers across the region. This PDAC funding will kickstart the Miami Valley Intern Academy for the first two years by providing 50% of the funding for every intern. After the first two years, each employer will sponsor students out of their annual operating budget. This project is ready for immediate funding. The online infrastructure is ready to go, schools and students are waiting in line and employers are primed.

As a result of this program, students across our region will be prepared to fill the many jobs that will be created through the growth of our economy. In addition, many companies across the region will benefit by hiring our students after they have completed their experiential learning opportunities. By hiring the students, they have already trained, they will reduce the amount of time and money required to get their newest employees prepared and ready to work.

Our region simply cannot rely on just classroom exposure to our in-demand careers. We have to give our students meaningful experiences in our in-demand industries to show them what the industries entail to guarantee their success.