After spending her summer at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago on the University of Chicago’s campus as part of UChicago’s Youth Internship Program (YIP), Jae’Lyn Prewitt says she’s developed a surprising shift in mindset which the South Shore resident and recent graduate of Jones College Prep high school believes will serve her well when she leaves for college at Illinois State University in the fall.
“I just feel like I’m more open to asking questions,” Prewitt said. “Like I can sort of figure out what to do better because I’ve been on UChicago’s campus. Because I’ve now had this experience here, it feels natural, and I can just apply asking questions and being curious other places [like college].”
Prewitt says she asked plenty of questions of the professors, graduate students, supervisors, and University and TTIC staff she worked with throughout her YIP experience and appreciated their collective willingness to not only always help her find answers but also encourage her to keep asking more.
It was Prewitt’s second summer taking part in YIP. Led by UChicago’s Office of Civic Engagement, the paid employment opportunity for Chicago Public high school students from the city’s South Side provides interns like Prewitt with meaningful work experience while also offering professional development workshops, career exploration activities, and college readiness and access programming. In 2022, in partnership with the city’s One Summer Chicago youth employment program, the program was expanded and shifted to its current two-summer format with a focus on STEM fields, hosting 74 interns this summer. Second-summer interns are placed in direct internships in health sciences, computer sciences, or IT services within one of several University units.
Rose Bradford, manager of research administration at the Institute and Prewitt’s internship supervisor under the direction of Professor Matt Walter, says she and her colleagues wanted to create an experience for Prewitt and the other interns they were working with this summer that treated them like regular graduate students—conducting research, learning coding platforms, taking part in hands-on lab projects, even building a robotic arm themselves and programming it to play tic-tac-toe.
“At TTIC, we’re all about outreach to the neighboring community and we are so excited about this partnership with YIP,” Bradford said. “We just want to continue to expose as many young people as possible to the field of computer science and let them see that it can be fun and exciting and something they can consider for a future career. It’s been a pleasure to watch Jae’Lyn engage and make the most out of this opportunity and I can’t wait to see what she does in the future.”
Though she’s always had an interest in computer science—particularly as it related to video gaming—Prewitt says participating in YIP has shaped those future plans in a few different ways. The program’s more college-and-career-readiness-focused first summer helped her and her family feel more confident in deciding on and applying to colleges and her time at the Institute has built on that confidence by exposing Prewitt to and connecting her with new scientific fields and professional networks. Bradford says sparking those passions and showing local students like Prewitt—and any other young girls across the South Side Prewitt goes on to inspire—the different ways they can pursue computer science is one of her unit’s central goals.
At Illinois State, where she’ll study computer science, Prewitt now hopes to find a robotics club or possibly a way to combine her love of art with the new technologies she’s learned this summer.
“Honestly, after this program, I’m open to exploring anything,” Prewitt said. “Wherever computer science takes me.”
