The Dakota Seeds program matches businesses to college students on a central Web site.
“It’s a place where an employer has a plan put together to offer beneficial learning experience to college students so they can kind of test each other,” Gov. Mike Rounds said.
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The program developed by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development officially kicked off Wednesday with 16 companies.
Economic development director Kim Olson said the initial companies involved in the pilot program are focused in offering science, technology, engineering and mathematics internships.
The state will pay up to half of the student’s wages with a maximum of $2,000 for undergraduates, $8,000 for graduate students working toward master’s degrees and $10,000 for anyone working toward a Ph.D.
Rounds said funding for the program will come from federal STEM grants and minor state funds from the Department of Labor and the governor’s administrative funds. State Secretary of Labor Pam Roberts said her department is the backbone of the seeds program, providing the behind-the-scenes operation of managing the Web site.
“Our career centers are going to be really involved to help businesses to get registered on the internship project,” Roberts said. “Then we do job fairs at campuses and will show the internships we have listed. We’re going to be very involved in the project.”
Currently there are 57 internships shown on the Dakota Seeds Web site. The site shows a job title, the duration of the internship, the pay rate, experience and education requirements and how many hours a week a person would work.
Most of the internships listed on the site give a duration range between 100 days and permanent. Most of the work locations are in Sioux Falls, Brookings and Aberdeen. At this time there are no locations in the Pierre area.
Olson said now that the program has been announced, other businesses will begin posting their internships on the site from all across the spectrum of industries in the state.
If businesses want to qualify to have the state pay up to half of the interns’ wages, the businesses must follow certain procedures and meet certain requirements.
First, the position must be newly created and it must be a long-term position that provides meaningful experience to the student. The position must have a link to science, technology, computer science, engineering or mathematics, which could be accomplished through the nature of the business, the project or the position, according to the Dakota Seeds Web site.
The student’s minimum wage is set at $9 an hour.
To search the internship database, post an internship job or to find more information on the project log on to dakotaseeds.com. Dakota Seeds is part of the Workforce 2025 initiative to keeps jobs and people in South Dakota to take over the jobs of the retiring baby boomer generation.
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