The Center for Career Education partnered this year with the student group Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs to launch the Startup Internship Program, which connects students with high-potential New York-based startups for a spring semester internship in order to help students sharpen their skills, to provide them with professional development and to teach them about the challenges and triumphs of growing a businesses in the marketplace. Through the Startup Internship Program, CCE also offers participants pre-program training, a mid-semester dinner with other program interns, one-on-one career-counseling appointments throughout the semester and an end-of-program reflection session with other participants. Eleven students participated in the program’s inaugural run at companies in fields that ranged from finance to healthcare, from marketing to consumer goods, and from public policy to fashion.
“[The StartUp Internship Program] has been a great way to promote entrepreneurship on campus and to give people the chance to intern at a startup and see what the environment is like.”