The American view: Who needs a business to deliver a summer business internship? Not me!

 I’ve enjoyed the heck out this summer. I know that might sound odd, especially if you recall that my team was laid off last winter, but this June and July have been a blast because I’ve invested 160 hours delivering an iteration of my traditional summer internship course to a young college age fellow. Half of those hours were spent in session prep, and the rest in seminar-style instruction. My Intern Professional Development (IPD) course is always a hoot, regardless of whether I’m getting paid to run it.

This all came about after I was asked to guest lecture on cybersecurity careers at the Gene A. Buinger Career & Technical Education Academy. This is the post-graduation professions school in our local district; students at “the Buinger” get to focus on learning career-related skills rather than general academics. Really neat place. I did a couple of talks there and mentioned that I highly recommend that new graduates take any corpo internship they can get … and that if they couldn’t snare a traditional internship, they could contact me and I’d deliver one.

I didn’t think anyone would take me up on the offer, but I meant what I said. When one of the students pinged me and asked if I was serious, I confirmed that not only was I serious, I was also committed. An officer’s word is his bond. We held our first 2026 session on 31st May and ended this morning (3rd August). Twenty two-hour (minimum length) sessions and twenty very large coffees later, my summer intern is heading for the employment market armed to the teeth with pragmatic insight into contemporary business world culture and leadership theory.

Please don’t take this as me bragging about creating an administrative miracle; it ain’t. I’ve been teaching variations of this course for twenty years. The original version was a Senior Non-Commissioned Officer (SRNCO) Professional Development curriculum for my Chief- and Senior Master Sergeants back when I was an Air Force unit commander. My goal at the time was to get my people prepared to serve in senior leadership roles in the civilian world following military retirement. That, and to address what I believed were serious gaps in their Professional Military Education (PME).