Celebrating Student Innovation and Inclusive Prosperity at the PSI 2024 Closing Ceremony

By Karen Kirkpatrick

In an event celebrating innovation, collaboration and a commitment to inclusive prosperity, the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation (Partnership) held its 2024 Summer Internship Closing Ceremony at Clayton State University in Morrow, Georgia.

The August 2 event celebrated the largest, most diverse cohort of Summer Interns since the program’s founding five years ago. This year, 80 interns representing 19 countries and 9 states worked in pairs for 12 weeks on 41 projects, including, in a first for the program, an intern-created and intern-led project to support computer science and engineering students at Clark Atlanta University.

“The Summer Internship is really focused on three things,” Cody Cocchi, the Partnership’s student engagement manager, said at the event, “experiential learning, mentorship and professional development.

“On the surface, it’s a 12-week paid internship for college students. But we couldn’t do this without the public impact organizations and project leaders who are looking at their communities, identifying challenges and then coming up with innovative solutions to address those challenges. Then we bring in civic-minded interns looking to make a difference within the community that they serve.”

In addition to a focus on civic projects, the Partnership’s Summer Internship is unique in several ways:

• Creates intentional collaborations and experiential learning to help students use data and technology to address complex challenges across Georgia and the Southeast;
• Invites higher education students from any year, any degree type and any institution to apply;
• Pairs students from different geographies, institutions and majors on each project; and provides weekly programming and mentoring throughout the summer; and
• Provides pay, which is important in fostering equity and creating an inclusive environment where access to learning is not limited by socioeconomic status.

A highlight of the ceremony was the lightning round, when interns and their leaders presented fast-paced overviews of the projects.

The 2024 projects included 911 mental health crisis response in Kennesaw; digitizing public art in Augusta; creating economic opportunities in Albany; a Downtown Dawsonville Strategic Plan; and generative AI policy in Washington, D.C., among other important projects. (See the complete list here.)

The 911 Mental Health Crisis Response Detection and Redirection project is an ongoing collaboration with local police, fire and other 911 responders to identify behavioral and mental health crisis cases from 911 calls at scale, accurately, legally and ethically.

“It’s a challenging project because there are legal issues, there are privacy issues,” said Dominic Thomas, who led on the 911 effort. He is associate professor of information systems, program coordinator for the information systems program and director of the modular agile deployment (MAD) lab at Kennesaw State University (KSU). “These two [interns] showed an understanding of the human implications of technology and an interest in solving those. That’s a rare person.”

Intern Shivani Bharadwaz, a KSU alum, worked on the 911 project and discussed why it was important to her. “I have an interest in mental health issues and behavioral health issues. So, it was really interesting to me that KSU was working on a project like this. I wanted to be part of utilizing technology to create a better system for mental health detection in 911 calls.”

Other speakers welcomed the student interns and applauded the work they had done around the state and Southeast. Georj Lewis, president of Clayton State University; State Rep. Scott Holcomb, (District 81); and Christopher Nunn, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, spoke about the importance of the internships to communities around the region.

A panel on civic innovation and career journeys featured Laura Lynch, associate vice chancellor of academic programs and policy with the University System of Georgia; Cecilia Mao, chief product officer at Equifax; and Amy Clarke, director of community impact, systems at the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, and was moderated by Blake Stoner, a project lead, and founder and chief reporter for Vngle, a grassroots news agency.

Keynote speaker James Gathings, an alumnus of the internship program and a current PIN Fellow (a Partnership program for young professionals), talked about why he believes the Summer Internship Program is so important.

“For organizations seeking to attract top tier talent, it is essential to prioritize the creation of inclusive and diverse workplaces,” he said. “Embracing diverse perspectives … can lead to innovation, creativity and better decision making, making your workplace more dynamic and successful.”

The ceremony ended with a poster showcase that allowed interns to present their projects more fully.

Chloe Paulk, an intern from Ocilla, Georgia, and a student at Mercer University, talked about her experience with the internship program, following her time with the FLEX initiative. “The FLEX program is oriented to high school student entrepreneurs,” she said. “I had the pleasure of participating in the FLEX program back in 2022. And it really impacted my business, Cake it with Chloe.

“Now being an intern for FLEX, I’m able to use my experience from being a former student in the program to help better other students’ experiences. It’s been such a rewarding summer and thanks to the Partnership Summer Internship, I’m able to make an impact on students’ experiences and help to cheer them on in their successes with their businesses.”