by Francine Schwartz

In a copper top building that sits on a hill overlooking the Marin County fairgrounds, an angled hallway on the third floor leads to an open door. If you step inside you'll find yourself in a room full of high school and college students staring into computer screens. No, they're not a bunch of jaded kids zoning out of their heads and into virtual shoot-em-up laser wars. The active energy in the room is unmistakeable. The kids are thinking, learning, experimenting. The computers are work stations. The place is Autodesk. Something very stimulating is going on here.

Two students are focused on a screen discussing the visual effect of the 3-D figure that one of them is working on. The figure is shown in sequential stages of walking across a room. Another student is looking over a testing script. Others are so engrossed in their own creative processes it seems their souls have left their bodies behind and actually entered the world that is being rendered before their eyes. Fingertips fly as the images evolve. Reflections of computer aided designs dance in the eyes of kids who just a few years ago could not even have imagined such a reality for themselves because it just didn't exist. Working side by side with Autodesk employees and not even out of high school? Come on! This is not a virtual reality dream for today's plugged in high school kid. It's real and it's happening now. We're talking about the internship program at Autodesk, where the wizards who designed such software computer aided design program paragons as AutoCAD and 3D Studio work and dream. And now the interns get to do that right along side them.

The internship program came about in an effort to bridge the gap between what students learn in a classroom and what awaits them outside in the working world.. The idea is to put the kids right into that world while they're still in school. This way they learn through experience first hand. On the job training - even before the job. The interface between school and work is manifested another way. What the students learn during their internship - be it technical, communication, or other skills - enhances their formal education. One complements the other.

The internship program at Autodesk is an education project supported by the Autodesk Foundation, an independent not-for-profit corporation established five years ago with start up funding from Autodesk, Inc. Joe Oakey, the foundation's president and an educator for fifty years, aspired to break the mold of existing education by implementing a project based approach to learning and by linking learning in school to real world experiences. . The buzzwords here are teamwork and integration - not only between the schools and the corporate world, but among the workforce itself and the school itself. The Foundation seeks to inspire schools to integrate areas of their own curriculum within the school structure as well as to integrate the curriculum with future "real" work on the outside. In addition the Autodesk Foundation is involved in efforts to award the students school credit for their involvement in the internship program.

Yet in the face of such exemplary ideals, cynics snicker and accuse Autodesk of an ingenious plan to recruit willing slave labor. The nonbelievers call it nothing short of a cunning ruse to get kids in there to make coffee, photocopies, and all the other little nuisances of everyday corporate life for free. The employees laugh. The interns don't make the coffee. They're too busy. These kids aren't "used and abused." They're valued - for who they are and what they contribute. Says Judy Morgan, Operations Manager at the Foundation, "I like being around their big brains. They're people. They don't always get treated that way in school or even at home. They've come to me with real help."

The interns joke about the "free labor" accusation. In their eyes, nothing could be further from the truth. They're in a great place getting all they want. Says Wes Middleton, 17 year old senior from San Marin High School, "There are so few places to find an opportunity like this - a big company with peers interested in the same thing as me, people who share my interests. The general atmosphere is condusive to learning, to moving ahead. I hope to gain knowledge of practical skills so when I go out in the real work force - I'm not out there blind.

Brett Capper, a fourteen year old freshman at Drake High School who is interested in making full-length computer animated movies, explains why he came to Autodesk. "I wanted to do graphics and be around other people doing the same thing.."

Jim Johnson, Autodesk's Multimedia Beta Manager, was running the Quality Assurance Lab three years ago when he first talked with Morgan about his "situation and needs." "With a lab of 100 plus computers there was only so much I could do. I was looking for some helping hands."

The program began with two students, both of them male. By this past summer the number had risen to current full capactiy - forty. The percentage of females is only 15%. When asked why the number is so low, the interns respond that girls don't seem to like computers. "They just don't come in looking for intern positions." This is something the people involved in the program are trying to change.

What Johnson looks for in a potential intern is energy and the desire to reach for all that's out there. "Someone who's self-determined, self-motivated, enthusiastic about themselves and about life in general." Johnson deadpans that beyond that ". . . all they have to do is show up."

Once accepted into the program, the world virtually opens at their feet. They get to use real tools and do real things. In Autodesk's world of virtual reality - what the intern thinks, says, and does actually counts.

The interns use programs like Animation Studio, 3D Studio, AutoCAD, Auto Sketch, AutoCAD LT, and Cyberspace Developer Kit. They test hardware, write and run automation scripts, learn computer installations and configuration, as well as database creation. Using the AutoCAD program they modeled the entire AutoCAD QA lab and created an interface to click on any computer and call up its entire database. The interns have shown the functionality of Autodesk in real world situations such as the Marin County Fair, where they dazzled visitors with demonstrations of 3D rendering; the renovation of the Rafael Theatre in San Rafael; and the New Media Center at the Digital Village, a collaborative multimedia cluster located at College of Marin's Indian Valley Campus in Novato. These kids aren't sitting around playing games, although it's hard to imagine them having more fun playing any. And if you ask them what they'd be doing after school if they weren't interning at Autodesk, they smile and tell you that they'd probably be sitting in front of their computers at home - doing the same thing (but without all the "awesome" tools).

Judy Morgan, whose background is cultural anthropology, speaks of the program in terms of opening doors, rounding out the corners of our society, removing students from the painful constraints of a culture which in large part still restricts rather than promotes an individual's creativity.

They're given the tools and set free. Put interested kids in a situation like that and spirits come alive. Gary Rasmussen, 17 year old senior from San Marin High School says, "We can use programs not even on the market. It's cool being able to see what's possible." Johnson, whose brown eyes emit beams of energy, lives and breathes the notion of "Just do it." What he wants for the interns is to enlighten them, to get them to the point where ". . . they start to see in 3-D. That's when they're really getting it." He believes anyone can get there. All you need are the tools and the obstacles disappear.

The belief here among employees and interns alike is that anything is possible, that anyone can do anything. Visualize and dream. Rather than plugging into someone else's reality, create your own. Although the internship program is relatively new, Autodesk, is not the only player on the scene. The Digital Village Foundation has been actively involved in developing successful internship programs throughout the North Bay. In accordance with the Foundation's vision for linking school with the workplace, the College of Marin's new multimedia program gives credit to student interns. Inspired by the Digital Village as well as the Novato Business Education Roundtable (a group made up of local business people and school administrators), Mindscape, the producers of such notable interactive CD ROMs as "How Your Body Works," "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing," and "Animals," got involved in the internship program in the fall of 1994. The effort was led by Paul J. Melmed, PhD, the Educational Research and Development Director, who zoomed right in on a unique situation going on at San Marin High School, namely an open space communications program involving 70 juniors and seniors. The program, entitled the Communications Academy,.integrates English and Social Studies while bringing in a third element - multimedia, the vehicle through which the information is delivered.

After focus testing some material for new Mindscape products with the class, Melmed was so impressed by the group's performance that he invited them to apply for internship with Mindscape. It was an idea well in sync with the open space class, which requires each student to devote 25 hours to community work. "In the beginning some washed," says Melmed, "because they couldn't make the commitment - basketball, typical teenage stuff." But five clicked. Not only that. Some of those students ended up sticking around with actual paying jobs.

So what exactly does Mindscape get out of the equation? Melmed responds with enthusiasm. "It's a way for us to have real life consumer output on a day to day basis, a way to keep a pulse on what else the kids are doing in their computer lives. And by getting students involved in real work it's a way for Mindscape "to give back to the community."

The interns take part in all phases of CD Rom production - Quality Assurance, Text Support, Marketing, Public Relations, concept and design. (Students in the Communications Academy were involved with the creation of "How Your Body Works" from beginning to end.) "The mentoring of potential multimedia employees can't be better done than with them being there (in the corporate setting) - all the ups and downs, the days when things are going great, and the days when you don't want to be there at all," says Melmed. "There's no other way to really see it."

Other companies are getting interested in the internship idea. Both Autodesk and Mindscape see their programs as models and hope that other companies will follow. Broderbund accepts some interns through its human resource channel. Other multimedia companies, including medium and smaller sized companies, are gradually entering the stage as well. Some, fearful of an overwhelming onslaught of applications, however, are reluctant to publicize and prefer to use "word of mouth" methods for recruitment. In a world of expanding technology that brings with it the potential threat of division and alienation- internship reflects what is inherent in multimedia - crossovers and interconnections, people working in teams, pooling information. Synthesis.