Clatsop Works Intern Len Bergman, learning power tool skills during staff training. (Photo by: Katy Menne, Columbia River Maritime Museum Education Director)
February 20, 2026
By Juliet Grable
High schoolers build STEM skills and confidence through paid internships with natural resource organizations.
At the Charleston Marine Life Center in Coos County, Oregon, visitors can watch an octopus eat lunch and peer into shallow tanks to marvel over sea stars, urchins, hermit crabs and other marine life that inhabit the intertidal zone.
Felix Bishop, an aspiring marine veterinarian who graduated from Marshfield High School in 2025, spent last summer caring for these creatures, thanks to a STEM high school internship funded through the Oregon Coast STEM Hub, which is managed by Oregon Sea Grant.
“My favorite thing to learn was how to care for the injured animals, and watching them heal made me very happy,” wrote Bishop. “I’ve learned so much about maintaining the aquarium, and even going out at sea and collecting marine life for the exhibits!”
Interns ease the burden on the center’s busy staff by cleaning tanks, prepping food, and feeding the animals. In exchange, “interns gain experience with animal husbandry, and they’re also learning a lot about the animals’ needs and biology,” says Trish Mace, director at the Charleston Marine Life Center. “We're very grateful to the STEM Hub because we wouldn't have the resources to pay interns without their support.”
Recognizing the gap between the rising number of STEM jobs in the state and the number of students who are qualified for those jobs, Oregon’s legislature set a mandate to expand STEM education—short for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—for students in kindergarten through high school, with an emphasis on reaching students who have lower rates of participation in STEM activities and STEM-related careers.
This mandate is carried out through Oregon’s STEM Hub Network, which was formally established in 2015. Each of the state’s 13 STEM Hubs has a different host organization, such as a community college, university, or Education Service District. Most funding comes through the Oregon Department of Education, but many Hubs obtain additional grant funding to enhance their offerings.
Eleven years ago, the Oregon Coast STEM hub began supporting one or two high school interns to work with Dr. Leigh Torres an Oregon Sea Grant Extension specialist based at the Marine Mammal Institute who leads the GEMM Lab (short for Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory). The program has expanded rapidly in the last few years; in 2025, Oregon Sea Grant used funding they had secured from multiple private sources (including the Alumbra Innovations Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, and Roundhouse Foundation) to support over two dozen paid high school STEM internships with nine partnering organizations along the Oregon Coast.
From the program’s inception, high school STEM interns have been paid at least minimum wage.
“We strongly believe that in order to equitably serve high school students, the internships need to be paid,” says Kama Almasi, Oregon Coast STEM Hub Director. “Otherwise, too many families couldn't afford for their high school students to volunteer.”
Interns work with mentors to explore future careers in a broad range of natural resource fields. The integrated, hands-on experiences can help steer students into the “blue economy”—the varied sectors that use and affect water resources, from fisheries and tourism to marine science and renewable energy.
At Yakona Nature Preserve & Learning Center in Lincoln County, interns participate in Sitka spruce forest restoration, with tasks that range from removing invasive vegetation and collecting native seeds to maintaining trails and developing interpretive signage.
Funding from the STEM Hub and the Gray Family Foundation allowed the center to hire seven interns last year. For the first time, students spent part of the eight-week internship with local agencies, including Lincoln County Parks, MidCoast Watersheds Council, and Lincoln Soil and Water Conservation District. Experts from fire agencies were also brought in to discuss career opportunities in urban and wildland firefighting.
“Partnering with these organizations really brought the internship program alive,” says Natalie Schaefer, executive director at Yakona Nature Preserve. “Otherwise the students would never be exposed to the range of different organizations and agencies and types of jobs in such a short period of time.”
In many cases, a STEM internship directly informs a student’s choice of college major or next job, says Almasi. “The hands-on experience and opportunity to witness what these jobs are like from day to day is just enormous.”
Partnering organizations draw interns from area high schools and recruit a broad range of students, including rural students, low-income students, students with disabilities, and other populations underrepresented in STEM. For example, in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, people of color and women hold far fewer jobs than their percentage of the general population. This disparity has its roots in education, where access to STEM coursework is not always available to all students.
Some students are labeled at an early age as low or high achieving in particular subjects such as math, says Almasi. “If you look at the numbers, the kids who get tracked as low achievers are often associated with specific populations.”
These students often don’t have the opportunity to take STEM electives, engineering, or extra science classes. Many accept the labels and believe that because they’ve been told they aren’t good at math, they’re not cut out for STEM subjects.
Mentorship can transform how the students view themselves and their capacities, says Jaime Belanger, education coordinator at South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve. At these state-owned wetlands, managed in partnership with NOAA, high school STEM interns work alongside college students, learning first-hand what college is actually like.
“It absolutely impacts how they think about college—what they think is feasible; what they think they're capable of,” says Belanger.
These same high school interns serve as mentors to slightly younger students who attend summer science camps at the Reserve.
Such “near-peer” mentoring is incredibly effective, says Tracy Crews, associate director of education at Oregon Sea Grant. “Students gain a heightened awareness of their own abilities, increased confidence, and motivation to pursue careers they might not have considered otherwise.” Crews and Torres have chronicled the benefits of “near-peer” mentoring in Current:The Journal of Marine Education.
Dr. Torres has incorporated the high school STEM internships into a larger program of peer-to-peer mentoring at the GEMM Lab. Two high school interns, drawn from local high schools, work with undergraduate interns from OSU; a graduate student mentors the undergrads, and a post-doc oversees them all.
For Hali Peterson, a high school intern at the GEMM Lab in 2024, mentoring a new intern was one of the most memorable experiences of her internship.
“Stepping into that role helped me reflect on my own learning and experiences,” Peterson wrote. “I had to go back and figure out how I did things, where I struggled, and how I overcame those struggles.”
To support the expanding internship program, Almasi had plans to add new partnering organizations in Tillamook County this year. Unfortunately, because of state budget cuts anticipated for the coming year, this may not be possible, but she is exploring options for funding from industry and private sources. She is also developing weekly sessions, modeled after the Oregon Employability Skills curriculum, to share practical strategies for improving communication skills and self-confidence—skills that will help the students no matter what paths they take.
