How we’re connecting more CUNY students to careers
Maria Campos, an accounting major at Lehman College, is working full-time this semester in a paid internship at Ernst & Young. Like other internships at major companies, it’s critical work experience and a career builder. She is not only being paid but also earning nine credits toward her degree.
Maria is a participant in an internship program launched in the fall by Lehman’s School of Business to help students gain work experience while getting paid and without sacrificing progress toward their degrees. We call them embedded internships.
“Internships are so important to getting a job when you graduate. It gives you experience you need — technical skills and interpersonal skills and a glimpse of what your life will be,” Maria says. “Getting credit has allowed me to focus on the work and get the most out of it.”
Your Future: Our Focus
In its first year, the Lehman program has already partnered with more than 20 employers and the New York Jobs CEO Council to provide 90 business students with paid internships. The program is at the cutting edge of CUNY’s drive to expand access to paid internships, apprenticeships and other “work-based learning” opportunities – an approach that’s central to our commitment to making career outcomes a priority from the day a student steps onto a CUNY campus.
That’s important to know for New York’s high school seniors and their families as they head into college decision season. Our expansion of programs that connect classrooms to careers means there are more ways than ever for students to find a pathway to their future with a CUNY education.
We now have more than 31,000 employers, from every field, actively recruiting in the CUNY system. We’ve connected more than 16,000 students directly to paid internships in the last three years. Meanwhile, over 100 of our academic departments have begun incorporating career-infused degree maps to help students reach career milestones tailored to their majors as part of their course planning.
One of the most exciting boosts to our work-based learning approach has been the CUNY Spring Forward program, which we began in 2023 with $4 million in state funding. Over three springs, the program has provided 2,264 CUNY students with paid internships that have accelerated their career prospects.
One of them is Kevin Duval, a Baruch College finance major who landed a Spring Forward internship last spring with GroupM, a major international media and marketing company headquartered in Lower Manhattan. He did so well that the company offered him a job after graduation this spring.
“I got to learn a lot of skills, see how decisions are made and even have a say. As an intern, that was very uplifting and encouraging,” Kevin said.
Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public university system in the United States.
