Students2Startups program provides hands-on startup experience

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Peter Webley
Center ICE’s Peter Webley talks more on Startup Week and how the interns can get involved during one of the Students to Startups Learning events.

Getting boots-on-the-ground experience in the entrepreneurial and business world is valuable especially for the students involved in the 2022 Students2Startups programs.

This summer, Center ICE supported six interns embedded in six startup companies and small businesses across Alaska.

Students came from across the University of Alaska system and including first-year students to those moving from their junior to senior years of college. Internship projects ranged from full-stack programming (referring to both client and server software development) to customer discovery of prototype development, and marketing, outreach and business development.

In addition to working on their projects, the interns learned about the statewide ecosystem, startup funding and heard from entrepreneurs across the state. The interns also worked on a team project to evaluate the market opportunity for academic research and the impact that the research could have on society. The interns developed new skills that they can continue to develop and will support them as they transition into the workforce after college.

Together Center ICE and the S2S interns supported Alaskan startups and small businesses to become more resilient and adapt to new opportunities while expanding the capacity of the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.

If you are a University of Alaska student or an Alaskan startup, learn more about the 2023 Students2Startups summer internship. Please contact pwwebley@alaska.edu with “Students to Startups 2023” in the subject line.

This Student to Startups program is funded through a grant to Center ICE from the Office of Naval Research. You can learn more about S2S at https://www.uaf.edu/centerice/students2startups/index.php.