March 5, 2022

BST Sponsors First Internship Program for the University of Hawai‘i ICS Department

Business Solution Technologies (BST) is sponsoring an internship program opportunity for rising seniors at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) College of Natural Sciences, Information and Computer Science (ICS) Department. The internship, developed by the ICS Department and BST, will be the first to directly connect students to the curriculum and capstone project required for graduation.

“As a Hawaii-based IT firm we’re proud to support this internship program with the ICS department that will not only give students the opportunity to meet their graduation requirements but more importantly, it will help to build a strong software development and IT workforce in Hawaii,” said John Weldon, President of BST. “At BST, we believe that it is important for the business community to step-up and engage with academia to help train our young people for demand professions, like technology, and prepare them for careers in Hawaii that are both high-skilled and high-paying job.”

The capstone project was recently added as a requirement to graduation for all University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UH Mānoa) computer science students receiving the Bachelor of Science (General) degree. In addition to the required curriculum, the capstone gives students experience on large-scale software development projects that both utilize skills learned in the classroom and provide experience with self-directed project management and ongoing client engagement.

The internship is a collaborative initiative between BST and the UH ICS Department that connects UH students with local companies in the hopes of encouraging them to stay and work in Hawaii after graduation. The long-term goal is to develop a Hawaii technical workforce that includes job opportunities in software and systems development, data sciences, artificial intelligence, IT infrastructure and other computational skills.

“We are thrilled to partner with Business Solution Technologies in this endeavor that connects our students’ software development capstone requirement to a real-world internship and provides them with a pathway to employment in Hawaii’s IT and computer science workforce. We hope that the model BST has pioneered with us can spread to other businesses throughout the state,” said Scott Robertson, Professor and Chair, ICS Department, College of Natural Sciences, UH Mānoa.

The BST internship is a paid opportunity with 10-12 hour per week and will run for one semester, with an option by BST to extend employment to the intern for placement into the BST Junior Development Program. BST has onboarded its first intern on Feb. 1, 2022.

To continue BST’s support of developing a software development and IT workforce in Hawaii, it has established the BST Scholarship for Excellence in Computer Science through the UH Foundation. Two annual $2,500 scholarships will be awarded to graduating seniors who will earn a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from UH Mānoa. Its first scholarship will be awarded in May 2022 to rising seniors for the 2022-2023 school year.

For more information about the BST internship and scholarship, visit www.bstusa.com.