Rochester Public Schools (RPS) has been fortunate enough to partner with many organizations to help provide a wide variety of opportunities for our students to explore their opportunities and to succeed in their goals. One of those organizations is the Mayo Clinic. Through our partnership with Mayo Clinic, we provide an internship program for our students called Project SEARCH.
Project SEARCH is a nine-month-long internship program for people between the ages of 18 and 21 years old with intellectual and developmental cognitive disabilities. It is an internationally recognized employer-led program that was designed at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) in 1996. Through the partnership between RPS, Mayo Clinic, Vocational Rehabilitation Services, Olmsted County Disability Services, and Opportunity Services, we have the privilege of being in our eighth year of providing this internship.
Each school year, this program gives eight to ten RPS students seeking competitive employment the opportunity to learn new employable and marketable work skills, all taking place at the Mayo Clinic, for an immersive workplace experience. Throughout the year, students will participate in three ten-week unpaid internships by Project SEARCH. Those internships include:
Central Services
Charter House
Comparative Medicine
Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathology
Environmental Services
Food Services
Health Sciences Research
Human Resources
Linen Services
Media Support Services
Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine
Programs like Project SEARCH help remove barriers preventing students with intellectual and developmental cognitive disabilities from attaining achievement and growth during and after their educational journey in Rochester Public Schools. Thanks to this program, we have been able to create many opportunities in our district and have helped employ numerous RPS graduates in and around Rochester.
