“The new web page reflects the rapid growth of a program that each year introduces hundreds of college students to valuable on-the-job training and professional development experiences through paid internships at top corporations and federal agencies,” said HACU President and CEO Antonio R. Flores.
“The HACU National Internship Program is also proving an invaluable national resource for directly addressing the need for diversity in our federal and corporate workplaces,” Flores said. “This program is opening new doors to rewarding careers for our students, and providing employers the opportunity to build workforces more reflective of our country’s increasingly diverse citizenry.”
The HACU National Internship Program (HNIP), which this year is celebrating its 10th anniversary, has provided paid internships to more than 3,800 students at offices of dozens of federal agencies and corporations that are formal HNIP partners. Once again, the program had more than 600 students from colleges and universities throughout the country become interns this year.
Students will now be able to apply to the program directly on-line. Other new features include intern success stories, partner profiles and national news coverage. The web address is www.hnip.net, which still can be accessed via HACU’s home page at www.hacu.net. HACU represents 335 colleges and universities serving the largest concentrations of Hispanic higher education students in the United States.
“This new web page is allowing us to take HNIP to the next level. We can better connect with our students, as well as better serve the needs of our federal and corporate partners,” said HNIP Executive Director William Rafael Gil.
“We envision extraordinary growth for this program, especially in the face of continuing under-representation of the nation’s youngest and largest ethnic population in federal workforce ranks and private sector management ranks. Many of our former interns today are full-time federal employees,” Gil said. Hispanics remain the only under-represented population group in the federal labor force. Only 6.7 percent of the federal work force is Hispanic, compared to 11.9 percent of the non-government work force.
For more information, contact HNIP Executive William Director William Rafael Gil at (202) 467-0893. Or visit www.hnip.net.