A paid internship program has partnered with a Central Oregon nonprofit that teaches skills for rural living to let high school students run the organization’s website and program registration, where they learn valuable tech skills while providing a useful service.

Mark Gross, founder and executive director of School of Ranch, moved to Central Oregon a few years ago after a lifetime living in cities, and found he needed to learn skills needed to live on a ranch. He connected with a local to learn how to cut down trees safely, then decided to create School of Ranch so others can learn those types of practical and artisan skills. Classes range from welding to soap-making to food preservation and animal husbandry.

In the past few months, Gross has expanded that teaching to technology skills as his interns have learned how to handle the school’s website, advertising and registration for new programs and classes.

“We’re volunteer-led and student-run, that’s the goal,” he said. “I found ways to work with kids and give them real life experiences in technology…what I’m doing here is just an extension of that same idea.”

Performing real work

Gross has five interns who can work where they want, when they want and on what they’re interested in. He’s been running this program for around three months, he said, after several attempts at running an internship program.

“I discovered how to do this by getting it wrong like thirty times,” he said. “Intern programs usually suck. … You’re doing fake work, you’re sort of doing made up things, you’re shadowing people and following them around but you’re not really part of anything.”

Gross is aware that high schoolers have a lot of other things going on in their lives. He’s designed an internship that allows them to be flexible in their work.

Gross and the students have created how-to guides for how to use the software tools to manage the registration forms, webpages, the website’s calendar and advertising campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. Each workshop School of Ranch runs has a webpage created by interns.

“Almost all the touch points that (participants) have prior going to the workshop are being put together, run, administrated by high school students,” he said.

Gross wants to open the opportunity to as many high school students as he can.

“I’m not trying with this thing to reach super A-plus students in super targeted career paths,” he said. “We’ll be bringing in kids with different socioeconomic backgrounds and different life experiences and giving them this kind of experience in a way that’s palatable to them.”

Interns can virtually pick up tasks they’re interested in, and if they want to start something that’s new to them, they need to be trained first. Gross created tools with ChatGPT to speed up the process.

“I hope to expand the range of activities that students are involved in,” Gross said. “In my experience this is a very novel way of approaching an internship program: the ‘grab me’ model, lack of a schedule, the students are involved and engaged in building the systems that they’re using, giving them real responsibility…If they get this wrong, people can’t register.”

Cohen Herbert, 18, is one of School of Ranch’s interns, and said the program has been fun and helpful. He found out about it in his school’s Future Center, which helps students find work, internships and scholarships. He works on the internship for three to 10 hours a week, and said he wants to do it for as long as he can.

“It’s very laid back and not stressful at all,” said Herbert, who is a high school student in Bend. He is also pursuing an associate’s degree from Central Oregon Community College. “It’s probably the best newbie job that gets into a direct field. … It’s a good job, pays really well and gives me experience that looks really good for me and it’s just enjoyable all the way around.”

Internship funding

The internship is organized through Youth Career Connect, East Cascades Works and the Youth Compass program.

Youth Career Connect is partially funded by Bend-La Pine Schools and Jefferson County School District. It contributes funds, as does East Cascades Works, and the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council’s Youth Compass program uses those funds for intern specialists who work with high schools to recruit students to look at potential internship opportunities. The specialists also make sure students are ready with interview practice and a completed resume.

Businesses or nonprofits in the area, like School of Ranch, host the interns.

The Youth Compass program has state and federal grant money that they use to pay interns. School of Ranch interns are paid $20 an hour: the grant pays $15, and School of Ranch pays $5. For every 60 hours they work, they earn half an elective credit toward their high school diploma.

Gross is looking forward to expanding the program.

“I’m amazed at how much of my work I can now trust my team with,” he said. “The original ideas I had, half of them are just wrong, just proven wrong by what actually happens. I’m modifying my expectations of what how this would work.”

COCC presidential search narrowed to three finalists