New program steps up internships for UMaine graduate students

Courtesy / Shuck Shack LLC Chase Hewitt, a graduate student at Maine Law, interned last summer for BP's Oysters in Damariscotta through the University of Maine Graduate and Professional Center’s Graduate Internship Program. He’s seen here several years earlier when he was a shucker for the BP’s Shuck Shack in Portland.

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By Laurie Schreiber

Many colleges offer summer internship programs for their undergraduate students.

Now the University of Maine Graduate and Professional Center is making that opportunity more accessible to graduate and professional students in the University of Maine School of Law, the University of Maine Graduate School of Business, and the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service.

The Maine Center Graduate Internship Program comes with a twist. Typically, internships pair, say, law students with law firms.

“We didn’t want to do that,” Terry Sutton, CEO of Maine Center Ventures, told Mainebiz.

Maine Center Ventures is a nonprofit that supports the University of Maine Graduate and Professional Center by serving as a liaison between the academic and employer communities.

Instead, she continued, the graduate level program requires internships that are interdisciplinary in nature or a nontraditional path for someone in a degree program.

That law student might work with an organization, company or government office on a policy or business issue.

“That’s the way most things happen in real life,” Sutton said. “One goal is to have our graduates be better prepared for the workplace they’re about to enter into, which is increasingly complex and not as narrowly focused as it was maybe 20 years ago. This internship program aims to give them broader exposure to issues they’re likely to encounter in the larger working world.

Attraction and retention

The University of Maine Graduate & Professional Center, called the Maine Center for short, is a consortium of graduate and professional programs in law, business, policy and public health working collaboratively with one another and with the public and private sectors. The center promotes experiential, interdisciplinary learning, including the internship program, which launched last summer with a cohort of 22 students.

The center launched its second cohort of 15 students this week.

The program is funded by an anonymous donor. Interns receive $15 per hour for up to 400 hours of work, a peer network, and professional development. Students are required to intern at Maine-based organizations.

“We’re focused on attracting and retaining students in Maine,” said Rebecca Gilbert, the Maine Center’s program manager, who heads up the program.

This summer, interns are in their early-20s to mid-40s. They’ve nailed down a variety of positions with state and local government, start-ups and nonprofits.

One law student is working on offshore wind with the Governor’s Energy Office. A law student and a business administration student are working with the New England Ocean Cluster, a blue-economy business development center in Portland. Others are working for Friends of Casco Bay and Blaze Partners, a Yarmouth-based marketing firm that needed help finishing its B Corporation certification.

UMaine MBA student Liam Mullen is interning with Seasau, a Portland start-up that’s getting ready to launch a prototype spa facility intended for marinas and waterfront hotels. His internship will touch on real estate, business development and finance. His classmate, Isuru Waduge, will deploy his academic background in business analytics and global policy to help SustainaMetrix, a social/ecological enterprise in the New England Ocean Cluster. He’ll help it develop a business plan for “bioregional learning journeys.”

Getting in the door

Last summer’s cohort included a Maine Law student, Chase Hewitt, who worked for BP's Oysters in Damariscotta. Initially the plan was to help founder Brendan Parsons research how to export oysters to Europe. When the pandemic hit, Hewitt ended up helping the company track legislative funding opportunities like the PPP loans as well.

Other interns performed similar pivots.

“But we’re hoping this year, students will be able to focus on the core business,” said Gilbert.

Funding for the program was a boon, considering the timing.

“We started this program in the middle of the pandemic, when many companies were very averse to spending money on anything that wasn’t critical at the time,” said Sutton.

Additionally, local governments and startups don’t necessarily have the funds to pay an intern.

Instead, the program provides the pay and gets interns in the door.

“We’re trying to create experiences for them that are amazing for their careers and also pay the bills for the summer,” said Gilbert.

With most of the anonymous donation being used up this year, the Maine Center is making plans to fundraise for an endowment that will support 15 to 20 students per year moving forward, said Sutton.

The program is valuable for graduate students, she added.

“Many graduate students think they’re on their own for that kind of experience,” she said. “We thought we could add value for them.”

There’s also a networking benefit.

“You get out of your academic bubble, interact in the real world and try out skills or an industry that you might not have had a chance to on a typical path,” Sutton said. “That’s what we’re trying to instigate with this type of program: Try something different.”

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