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Internships for Students: Real Work, Real Experience, Real Opportunities

Podcast Summary:

This Blind Abilities episode shines a spotlight on internships for blind and low-vision students—and why starting early can open real doors. Tou Yang and Randi Lasher from State Services for the Blind of Minnesota (SSB), break down how high school and college students can access paid and unpaid internships that build skills, confidence, and career momentum. Listeners learn what internships really are, why they matter beyond just a paycheck, and how they connect classroom learning to real-world experience. The conversation highlights how SSB helps students explore careers, prepare for post-secondary education, advocate for themselves, and find meaningful internship opportunities across Minnesota. From local city programs to statewide options in technology, healthcare, STEM, public service, and more, this episode makes one thing clear: opportunities exist—but timing matters. Whether you’re planning for summer, next year, or your future career path, this episode gives students practical guidance, resources, and motivation to take action and get ahead.

Links to Internship Opportunities mentioned in this episode:

To find out more about the services provided at State Services for the Blind, and what they can do for you, contact Shane DeSantis at shane.desantis@state.mn.us or call Shane at 651-385-5205.

Full Transcript

Tou: In these programs, they give you opportunities to internships for students that otherwise might not have opportunity to these internships.

Randi: Minnesota Department of Transportation Seeds program has a variety of internship possibilities and can be in a variety of areas.

Tou: Students need to be hopping on these opportunities at the beginning of the year, even though summer is six months away.

Randi: Here at SSP, that’s something that we love to do is help connect students to those opportunities.

Jeff: Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Geoff Thompson. Today we’re going to be talking about internships for college students, high school students. And with us to talk about it from State Services for the Blind in Minnesota, Randi Lasher and Tou Yang. So great to have you both in the studio today. Tou, why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us what you do at State Services for the blind?

Tou: Cool. Thanks for having me, Jeff. So I’m a Transition Work Opportunities Navigator or just Transition Navigator for short. Essentially I do three things at State Service for the blind or SSB. One, I help students with career exploration. Two, I help students with learning more about post-secondary options, and three, I help students with job and internship search.

Jeff: Thanks Tou. And Randi Lasher from Greater Minnesota. Welcome to Blind abilities.

Randi: Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. My name is Randi Lasher, and I am our secondary Transition Work Opportunity Navigator. I work in central and northern Minnesota along with Tou. And the only thing I’d add, as far as things that we do in supporting students, is throughout the process of helping explore career and college options and readiness. We also help to support students with being good self-advocates. And that’s just kind of an underlying piece of our work in pre-employment transition services, which is kind of the wider umbrella of the area we work.

Jeff: Thanks Randi, and thank you both for really being here, because this is an important topic. This is about opportunities not only for making money, but to gain experience. Why don’t  we start out by telling the listeners, what is an internship?

Tou: Yeah, an internship is really a opportunity for a student or, I guess, anyone, to have some sort of work experience. They vary from length, but generally it could be a couple of weeks to maybe a year for that person to pretty much gain experience, gain direct experience, get to see things going on in the workplace that they otherwise might not have the opportunity to. And for them to develop some work skills that employers want, internships is just a great way for you to get in the door.

Randi: Yeah, internships help bridge classroom learning with real world applications. You know, as Tou said, it really can be for anyone. But often we see internship opportunities for high school students or college students. Sometimes it’s a requirement of your program, and sometimes it’s just a great way to gain that experience that employers are looking for, or to give yourself the edge over competition when you’re entering the workforce and just gives you that short term, hands on work experience, that’s so invaluable. And ideally it’s paid, but some internships are unpaid as well. But yeah, I think Tou pretty much covered it.

Jeff: Well thank you. That’s really good information to know. So when should students begin the process of looking for internships. And are they time sensitive.

Tou: Yeah I’d say internships tends to come in seasons or phases. And so right now the time of recording it’s January. And I’d say for a lot of high school internships this is kind of prime time to start applying to those opportunities. January, February, even though summer is still six months away from now, that’s the application period to begin to apply to those programs. So, for example, in Minneapolis, there’s step up internship program. It’s open right now. And I think the deadline might actually be like February 1st or something. And so students need to be hopping on these opportunities at the beginning of the year, even though summer is six months away. I want to highlight that for college students, they have to be on top of there, I guess internship game even earlier, as those summer opportunities will generally begin to open up in the fall of the previous year. And so the previous year, and I guess for now would be 2025. So if a student was looking for a summer opportunity for 2026, it might have been good for them to begin looking as early as August or September of 2025.

Jeff: Oh yeah, sounds like something you want to keep track of and stay ahead of the game. Randi, where do students start looking for internship opportunities?

Randi: Students can look for internship opportunities from a variety of places. I think it kind of depends on where they’re at in their education journey and their work experience journey, and what type of internship they’re looking for. Because often, you know, if we’re talking college students and an internship is required, their school, their college is going to be a really great resource to help them with finding those opportunities and often will have connections with community employers that have been good partners in the past in providing internship opportunities for previous students here at CSB. That’s something that we love to do, is help connect students to those opportunities. So I’d say if you’re connected with us, reach out to two or I reach out to your counselor. We’re happy to do that. Search with you and otherwise just doing a general search. We all have access to Wide World of the internet, and so that can be a great place as well, just to type in kind of the parameters of the field you’re looking for and highlight that you’re looking for an internship in the state of Minnesota or in your specific community, and you should find result of opportunities that exist there. But, I mean, the biggest thing I’d highlight is your college will be a great resource, and SSB is happy to be a resource in finding those opportunities as well.

Tou: Yeah, I think Randi highlighted resources like SSB and the Career Center from your college or school. I’d say on your own individual online search. A great place to check out is HandShake. If you haven’t heard of HandShake, it’s sort of a great hub that a lot of different employers use to try to recruit students. And so your college probably has a HandShake contract or subscription where students from that school can take advantage of the HandShake resource. But essentially HandShake is a job board. But most of them, if not all of them, are internships, just like a regular Google search or something. Just put in your job that you’re looking for or internship type that you’re looking for, and your location. And then HandShake will pull up a list of internships that you’re looking for. And so HandShake. Great resource. Definitely check it out. You can ask one of us here at SSB, or maybe someone from your career center for details about that great resource to check out. I want to add that if you don’t want to do HandShake or if you have one specific employer in mind, maybe you can just go directly to their website too. So here in Minnesota, you know, we have different corporations that maybe employs thousands of people. So I’m just thinking 3M, in particular right now. Let’s say I want to have an internship at 3M, I might just go directly to 3M’s website and look at their job board, and maybe just enter into their job search bar internship, and I’ll see their internships that are open. I might pull up nothing or I might pull up a couple. It’s hit or miss, but if you have a list of different employers that you’re interested in, just look them up, go to their job board and search up internships, and if they have openings, you can apply to them. And similar to what I said earlier, prime time for those opportunities are around early fall, late summer. That’s where they’re beginning to look for them. And it kind of wanes throughout the year, I guess as summer approaches.

Jeff: I like that, HandShake. Yeah, we’ll put a link for that in the show notes. And 3M, that’s a big company. There’s a lot of big companies in Minnesota. Are there internship programs and opportunities for specific areas or careers?

Tou: A lot of high school internships are geography based. So earlier I had mentioned Step Up. So Step Up is Minneapolis based? In order for you to be eligible to take advantage of that program, you have to either live in Minneapolis or go to school in Minneapolis. They have other eligibility criteria, too, but that’s kind of the big one. And so there’s of course, Right Track, which is, you know, the mirror version of Step Up, but it’s for Saint Paul. And in these programs they give you opportunities to internships for students that otherwise might not have opportunity to these internships. So they have relationships with businesses in the area, nonprofits or corporations, government, where students will perform a variety of tasks that they’ve been designated to perform. And so the program is, I want to say, six weeks. I might be wrong on that, but it’s just a great opportunity for students to gain those skills for them to add to their resume. Some other ones in the Twin Cities area that I want to highlight is Genesis Works. They don’t have a city criteria. You can be. I think they serve the general Twin Cities area, but their focus is in business and technology. Their approach is different though, where they have a couple of weeks of training and then they will ship you off to a internship opportunity. Really cool opportunity that expands beyond just Minneapolis and Saint Paul and the geography that they serve. There is for college students a program called Urban Scholars. And so Urban Scholars, their focus is on public service and government work. And so that’s housed under the city of Minneapolis. But anyone can apply to it, whether you’re from Minnesota or outside of Minnesota. It is open to anyone that’s looking to gain that sort of experience, and that one’s meant for college students. Those are some that I can highlight right now.

Randi: I’m happy to jump in with some that are maybe more statewide or central northern Minnesota opportunities. Those Tou said often internships are specific to your geographic area that you’re based out of, so some more statewide options depending on your interests there. Again, State of Minnesota offers many different internship opportunities. One that I’ve had students take advantage of is internship opportunities with the DNR. So they offer opportunities in things like aquatic invasive species, fisheries, forestry, wildlife management and research. And there’s a much longer list. But if something in that realm interests you, as we talked before, January is a great month to check out those opportunities, and you can just log on to the Minnesota Careers website to see what opportunities exist for summer internships. And those ones would be paid 20 to 40 hours a week. There. Again, depending on your location, opportunities are kind of scattered throughout the state along the lines of statewide possibilities. Minnesota Department of Transportation also has a program called Seeds. They provide paid, college level student worker positions for disadvantaged college students, students who are recently separated. Veterans. Students with disabilities, female students, Stem or other non-traditional fields of study. So that is a kind of more specific qualifications or criteria to be eligible for that program. There’s a longer list, but Minnesota Department of Transportation Seeds program has a variety of internship possibilities and can be in a variety of areas related to the DOT’s business needs so it can be accounting and finance, architecture, business management, civil engineering, land surveying, office management, you name it. A wide variety of opportunities there. But the Seeds student worker program is nice because it is specifically designed for individuals that might be in disadvantaged groups. And so just providing increased opportunity there and opportunities with the Seeds program are not specific to January, February but are year round.

So, you know, you can just go and look if you’re interested in a possibility with the DOT. And Again, a wide variety of career fields that that touches on, you can look statewide and see what those possibilities are. Later this month we are going to have openings for what’s called the Scrubs Camp or Scrubs Program, which is sponsored by Health Force through the state of Minnesota. And that’s a camp that’s specific to it’s actually open to middle schoolers as well. But middle school and high school students interested in a career in the healthcare field. And so if that is you, you’re interested in doing something healthcare related talk with Tou or I, talk with your counselor about Scrubs Camp. It’s a hands on, immersive type experience where you can gain some really great experience related to career possibilities in healthcare, and those happen at various technical and community college campuses across the state. So it’s very possible to find one in your area. That is a summer opportunity. Another that I have on my list here is the Phoenix Student Worker Program, which offers hands on work experience for high school students interested in STEM. This is another kind of offshoot of what I mentioned earlier, the Minnesota Department of Transportation Opportunities. But the Phoenix Student Worker program is one that’s more geared toward high school students. So again, the state of Minnesota has a wide variety of career internship possibilities. And you can find those on the State of Minnesota careers website. You can talk with your counselor. You can talk with your high school or your college career advisor. And any of those resources should help you to explore what possibilities might be listed there.

Tou: I just want to say that even though we covered some programs, just generally speaking, if you don’t live in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, you can probably try to search up to see if the city that you live in has a program similar to what Minneapolis and Saint Paul does. For example, Brooklynk, which is a neighbor of Minneapolis, is a program of Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, the northwestern suburbs of the Twin Cities. And those students wouldn’t be able to take advantage of Step Up, which is a Minneapolis program. But Brooklynk, they have their own program, which is, you know, pretty much the same thing as Step Up and Right Track of Saint Paul. And so if you don’t happen to live in those regions, you can see if maybe your city has a program similar to those. I can’t name all of them, but maybe you can just try to do a search to see if there’s something similar to that available in your area. I just want to elaborate too, that you know, Western Metro here, maybe like Plymouth or something, they wouldn’t be able to take advantage of step up either. But then there’s also tree trusts or Three Rivers Park internship programs where those are more outdoorsy kind of opportunities, but that would be something that would be available to them. And on the college end of things, I had mentioned urban scholars, but there are other programs too that I want to highlight real quick, the Brand Lab, which focuses on marketing and graphic design. And then just quickly, the Minnesota Historical Society, which focuses on history. So if there is a particular career path that you’re thinking about, there’s probably some sort of program that tailors to that. And so just like the brand Lab is towards marketing and design or, you know, history. If there’s something that you’re particularly tuned in on, you can try to just do a search to see if maybe there’s a program out there in the world that tailors to your taste.

Jeff: Oh, such great resources, especially for someone just starting the process of looking for internships. And you’ll find links to these in the show notes, all of them that were mentioned, you’ll find them there. So check it out. And Randi, if someone wanted to find out more about internships and work opportunities, how can they get Ahold of State Services for the blind?

Randi: Absolutely. If you’re connected with us, as I already mentioned, feel free to reach out to, Tou, or I or whoever your assigned counselor is, and we are happy to point you in the right direction. You can also go to our website. It’s www.mn.Gov/deed/ssb And when you’re on that main page you can select the top left link is youth services. It should be the first option that pops up on the navigation bar. Youth services. And once you’re in Youth services, you’ll have the option to select on upcoming events and opportunities. And from there we have a page that’s titled Work Based Learning and Work Readiness Opportunities, and that has a revolving list of opportunities for students. Right now it’s highlighting Resource Slash LEAP, which is a program acronym that stands for Learn, Earn And Prosper offering Virtual Work Experiences. There’s also opportunities through Vanward Consulting Services and many other opportunities similar to those we’ve been talking about.

Tou: I just want to add to that you, just for some reason, don’t want to connect with SSB or Vocational Rehabilitation, which is okay. You can also just talk to your school’s career services. They probably have information about nearby internship opportunities or just what’s out in your area. And so every school has one. Or they should have one a career services departments. Or they might call it something different, but a person that will talk about resumes or cover letters or jobs, and that person should be able to help point you in the right direction.

Randi: Just adding on to additional resources to look for opportunities, especially for those in central and northern Minnesota. A great place to explore internship possibilities would also be your local career force. And in those local career force locations, there are sometimes programs very much like state services for the blind or Voc Rehab that can offer assistance with connecting students to internship. For example, out of Brainerd and Bemidji, there’s a program called Rural Minnesota CEP, and they often have funds available to help provide paid summer work experience, experiences and internships for students. Again, they’re similar programs to that depending on your location in the state. But the career force can help to get you more information about those opportunities.

Jeff: Wow, such great information not only from the Twin Cities, but across the whole state of Minnesota, so check out the links in the show notes to click on them. See if there’s an opportunity for you. Randi, Tou, thank you so much for what you’re doing for work opportunities for the students of Minnesota.

Tou: Thank you so much.

Randi: Thanks so much, Jeff.

To find out more about all the programs at State Services for the Blind, contact Shane.DeSantis at state.mn.us. That’s Shane dot d-e-s-a-n-t-i-s at state.mn .us. 

(Music)

Jeff: Be sure to contact your State Services for the Blind, your Voc Rehab and find out what they can do for you. 

Live, work, read, succeed. 

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…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities