Akamai Internship Program Outcomes

Serving Diverse Students

All Akamai interns are either from Hawaii or enrolled in a University of Hawaii campus. Akamai strives to include students from groups underrepresented in STEM. The table below shows the demographics of Akamai alumni since the inception of the program in 2003.

Group Akamai Interns (n=428) Discussion
Women 37% Most Akamai interns are engineering majors, fields in which women typically make up only 20% of students, both nationally and locally at UH Manoa.
Underrepresented minorities 47% Most Akamai interns are engineering majors, fields in which underrepresented minorities make up ~15% of students.
Native Hawai‘ians 23% At the UH Manoa College of Engineering, ~13% of students are Native Hawai‘ian / Pacific Islander, whereas Native Hawai‘ians make up ~23% of Hawai‘i’s overall population.

Retaining and Advancing Students in STEM

Akamai 2003-2016 alumni 3+ years after internship
(n=329)
Persistence rate of the 270 (83%) located
Now in STEM workforce 81%
Enrolled in undergrad or grad STEM program 7%
Total on STEM pathway 88%
Women 86%
All underrepresented minorities 86%

See more information on our Resources Page

Including the 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Paper
Successfully Building a Diverse Telescope Workforce: The Design of the Akamai Internship Program in Hawai‘i
Barnes, A., & Ball, T., & Starr, C. R., & Seagroves, S., & Perez, K., & Hunter, L. (2018, June), Successfully Building a Diverse Telescope Workforce: The Design of the Akamai Internship Program in Hawai’i Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Salt Lake City, Utah. https://peer.asee.org/31030