Students from UAF Join Alaska Startups for Summer Internships
July 10, 2023
Students2Startups takes UA students and places them with innovative Alaskan startups to experience real-world internships at revolutionary companies.
These companies are pioneers of change in our state and our students get to see firsthand how to influence change and bring solutions to Alaska through businesses centered around innovation. One of the students in the current Students2Startups cohort, Anthony van Weel, described the program as a way to connect students to local startups, providing experience and skills for the students while enriching the local startup ecosystem. Anthony said the program has opened his eyes to the rich and diverse startup economy in our state. "I know a lot more about what all actually goes into creating a new business in Alaska and actually getting it up and running."
A Process Engineering intern in the program said one of the important learning experiences for them has been reading and researching published papers to find and organize components for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), a concept that encourages the simplification of products/services in order to get them to market faster. Sometimes the MVP represents only a portion of the total research and development that needs to be done to achieve the long-term goal of the business. It is a tool for businesses to get started building and reaching consumers before spending time, money, and energy developing stakeholder involvement. This is a concept taught at length in our I-Corps program. Learn more here!