eWorld Enterprise Solutions (eWorldES), a staunch supporter of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, has offered an internship program to students in the Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) program since 2010 and has ended up employing many of them.
“It had always been the desire of eWorldES to provide career opportunities for graduating students and local IT professionals who wished to remain in Hawaiʻi,” said Steve Mizokawa, vice president for business development. “I reached out to ICS Professor Phillip Johnson about our desire to start the internship program and was very impressed with the curriculum and how it was providing students with a solid foundation for developing business applications.”
According to Johnson, “eWorldES has provided valuable internship experiences to ICS students for many years. Their program creates an important bridge between academic and real world software development and I hope we can continue this partnership for many years to come.”
One of the university’s strategic directions is to create additional high-quality jobs and diversify Hawaiʻi’s economy through innovation. Garret Yoshimi, UH vice president for information technology and CIO, says the internship program helps the university tie together its STEM and broad workforce development initiatives. “The opportunity to gain real work experience, on project teams delivering actual customer projects, is invaluable in giving our students the best chance to succeed in the industry. The eWorldES team continues to make significant investments in our future workforce through high-quality student internships, thereby bringing practical, real-world balance to our students’ educational experience at UH Mānoa.”
To date, 18 students from UH Mānoa have participated in the eWorldES internship program. To illustrate the success of the internship program, 27 of eWorldES’ current and past employees were graduates of UH Mānoa’s ICS program—12 interns were hired by eWorldES and 4 interns have pursued careers on the mainland.
According to Mizokawa, “Working within a team environment, we provide our interns with relevant career experiences using the latest development tools. However, the true reward for eWorldES is our ability to offer these students a position in our company after graduation.”
