STAR Center Internship Opportunities

FACILITY

The STAR Center is a non-profit technology center for individuals with disabilities. It is a non-residential facility that provides technology assistance and training for children and adults throughout West Tennessee. It is funded by County, State, and Federal grants, private and corporate donations, and United Way. STAR provides an interactive learning environment where parents, children, adults and professionals in education, rehabilitation and health services can explore the many uses of computer and assistive technology for persons with disabilities.

LOCATION

The STAR Center is located in Jackson, Tennessee, near Interstate 40, about midway between Memphis and Nashville. Jackson is a small city with a population between 60,000 - 70,000.

Directions to the STAR Center

REQUIREMENTS

You will need to fill out a standard form for employment, available on request at the front desk at the STAR Center, or downloadable at the link below.

Application for Employment

Effective July 2005, all new interns to the STAR Center must pass a background screening and drug test. We will provide as many internships as possible, but numbers may be limited due to this policy.

PROGRAMS OFFERED

The STAR Center currently offers internships in two programs: Music Therapy and Information Services. Details are below.

The music therapy program at STAR was officially approved as a clinical training site on June 16, 1997.

The following downloads are available for interested students:

Music Therapy Internship Information Form (PDF format)
Music Therapy Internship Application Form (PDF format)

MUSIC THERAPY DEPARTMENT

Due to the recent move of the STAR facility, the Music Therapy Department now occupies a suite of offices and treatment rooms. Each intern has a separate workstation located in the outer office. The STAR Center currently has two Board-Certified Music Therapists, and generally introduces a new intern every three months.

The music therapy program at the STAR Center stresses positive reinforcement. It is designed to help our clients increase self-esteem and improve quality of life. Music therapy plays an important part in the lives of clients in this program because it motivates them to achieve goals in areas of communication, mobility and coordination, cognition, socialization, and independent living.

Because of our diversity of clients, our music therapy program must be flexible. Some clients receive a very structured program for meeting educational goals, while improvisational techniques are used with other clients.

The majority of music therapy sessions are one-on-one. There will be a few small group sessions consisting of 3 or 4 clients. Adequate time will be allowed for the intern to observe, co-lead, and lead sessions. The intern will learn to modify and create music therapy activities, which help the client meet his/her objectives.

Each intern will keep a music therapy notebook that will include the following: a brief summary of the intern's reactions and attitudes to weekly events, music therapy activities, and list of resources. Two books will be assigned to read and a written report included in the notebook. Assigned articles relevant to our client population will be required and notes placed in intern's notebook.

The intern will have a unique opportunity to participate in related services, such as Augmentative Speech Communication, Job Placement, Client Computer Assessments, Art Therapy, Technology Training and Computer Lab. It will be an asset to the intern's training to be knowledgeable about other areas which will impact music therapy.

IS Interns at the STAR Center will work with IT professionals and will be focused on providing solutions for the Center. What an intern does during their internship can be quite varied and is not fully reliant on the major -- a programmer may be assigned to server set up and PC troubleshooting, and a networking major may end up documenting software and writing web pages, though more often than not tasks similar to one's major will be assigned. IS Interns have a great deal of autonomy in the projects they wish to work on and the things they wish to study while interning at the STAR Center, and their decisions are respected. The abilities of the interns are fully embraced -- for example, a former intern used his self-taught Photoshop and AutoCAD skills to design and create the fire escape plans for the new building. Internship involves participation in a wide variety of IT operations, including planning and decision-making processes. An intern's time will not be wasted with office work and other trivial tasks.

The STAR Center's networking and software infrastructure is heavily based on open source. The majority of the servers run FreeBSD or Linux, and open source applications are embraced on the desktop. Furthermore, the STAR Center's internal software is written in PHP and uses MySQL as a database. STAR Center internships provide an excellent opportunity for anyone interested in the open source movement to gain real world experience with open source, and open source enthusiasts are encouraged to apply for internships.

IS Interns will need to fill out a standard employment application form, present a resume, participate in an interview, and take a background and drug screening test. Afterwards, IS interns will need to sign a number of confidentiality documents due to the nature of the work.

The hours are flexible around school and work needs, as long as one is present during assigned hours. Although the internships at the STAR Center are unpaid, the experience gained can be invaluable and references to future employers will be given on request. However, the numbers of interns are limited due to the new requirements of background tests and drug screenings.

The STAR Center makes an excellent place for CIS students of Jackson State Community College to intern, and the STAR Center has a number of JSCC alumni among its staff.

For more information on IS Internships, please contact Sonny Davis at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .