Solar, wind energy a missed opportunity for Cuba - Boston Globe

var archivedState=0;

RAMON GORDO, Cuba (AP) — The sleepy country setting that farmer Juan Alonso calls home hasn’t changed much since he was born 74 years ago, with the two rustic wooden houses nestled among palm trees against a backdrop of green hills and clear skies.

Incongruously perched atop the homes are the only visual clues that his 150-acre (60-hectare) farm inhabits the 21st century: the gleaming solar panels that revolutionized the lives of Alonso and his family.

‘‘Just imagine, you toil all day in the field and then when you get home you have to grope around doing things with a gas lantern, with a torch to illuminate the patio at night,’’ Alonso said, describing life during decades past. Now his family has electric lights, a television and a DVD player. ‘‘It’s a change as radical as night to day.’’

Cuba is proud of its success in using alternative energy to bring electricity to isolated hamlets like Ramon Gordo, 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Havana. Some 2,000 schools and at least 400 hospitals are lit up by solar panels in rural areas not plugged into the national grid. But scientists say the island, blessed with year-around sunshine and sea breezes but plagued with chronic energy shortages, could be doing much more on the national level, and that its communist government is missing a golden opportunity to reduce its dependence on subsidized oil from uber-ally Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez is sick with cancer.

It is vital that Cuba expand its energy horizons ‘‘so it doesn’t remain at the mercy of political changes in the region that could affect it adversely,’’ said Judith Cherni, an alternative energy expert at the Imperial College London Center for Environmental Policy.

The urgency to find alternative energy sources was driven home last month when an exploratory offshore oil well drilled by Spanish company Repsol turned out to be dry, a setback to Cuba’s hopes for a big strike that could be a boon for the limping economy, though exploration continues.

Despite recent essays by revolutionary hero Fidel Castro on impending global catastrophe due to climate change, Cuba gets just 3.8 percent of its electricity from renewables, a pittance even by regional standards and far behind global leaders.

In the nearby Dominican Republic, where a 2007 law establishes tax breaks for investment in alternative energy, renewables account for 14 percent of electrical generation. Germany, the gold standard for high-tech green energy, gets 20 percent of its considerably larger electrical consumption from renewables, mostly from wind.

The reality in Cuba today is that wind and solar energy sources are almost exclusively for local consumption and there has been little attempt to expand them to augment the national grid, which is powered mostly by fossil fuels. Scientists say the country lacks the investment and expertise for such a move.

Around the region, examples abound for Cuba to emulate. Central American nations are using hydroelectric facilities to harness the power of rivers. Caribbean islands are passing laws stimulating foreign investment in renewables. Wind and solar farms are popping up where viable. Faraway in Europe, and nearby in the United States, individuals with solar panels can get paid for any extra energy they generate that goes back into the grid.

‘‘Possessing apt natural resources to generate energies is a tremendous boon, but that alone is not enough to create energy,’’ said Cherni.

Another obstacle to boosting renewable energy is a stubbornly fixed mindset that equates development with oil.

Memories are still vivid here of the ‘‘Special Period’’ of the 1990s, when the island’s economy tanked with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ushering in years of hunger, prolonged blackouts and fuel shortages. People thumbed rides to work on the back of bicycles as cars sat idle and empty-tanked.

To cope, Cuba began installing its first solar panels, building small hydroelectric plants, restoring old windmills and extracting gas from animal waste.

But after Chavez’s election in 1998 in oil-rich Venezuela, Cuba once again embraced fossil fuels wholeheartedly with the appearance of a new benefactor and ideological ally willing to help keep the lights on. Today Caracas provides nearly half Cuba’s petroleum needs, shipping about 100,000 barrels of oil a day to the island on beneficial terms while Cuba sends doctors and technical advisers to Venezuela.

‘‘Cuba is a nation that is dependent on oil, yes, but in addition the culture of its leaders and technicians, of its common citizens, is one of fossil fuels,’’ said Alejandro Montesinos, a renewable energy expert at Cubasolar, the island’s chief NGO for sustainable energy.Continued...

View the original article here

Solar, wind energy a missed opportunity for Cuba - Boston Globe

var archivedState=0;

RAMON GORDO, Cuba (AP) — The sleepy country setting that farmer Juan Alonso calls home hasn’t changed much since he was born 74 years ago, with the two rustic wooden houses nestled among palm trees against a backdrop of green hills and clear skies.

Incongruously perched atop the homes are the only visual clues that his 150-acre (60-hectare) farm inhabits the 21st century: the gleaming solar panels that revolutionized the lives of Alonso and his family.

‘‘Just imagine, you toil all day in the field and then when you get home you have to grope around doing things with a gas lantern, with a torch to illuminate the patio at night,’’ Alonso said, describing life during decades past. Now his family has electric lights, a television and a DVD player. ‘‘It’s a change as radical as night to day.’’

Cuba is proud of its success in using alternative energy to bring electricity to isolated hamlets like Ramon Gordo, 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Havana. Some 2,000 schools and at least 400 hospitals are lit up by solar panels in rural areas not plugged into the national grid. But scientists say the island, blessed with year-around sunshine and sea breezes but plagued with chronic energy shortages, could be doing much more on the national level, and that its communist government is missing a golden opportunity to reduce its dependence on subsidized oil from uber-ally Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez is sick with cancer.

It is vital that Cuba expand its energy horizons ‘‘so it doesn’t remain at the mercy of political changes in the region that could affect it adversely,’’ said Judith Cherni, an alternative energy expert at the Imperial College London Center for Environmental Policy.

The urgency to find alternative energy sources was driven home last month when an exploratory offshore oil well drilled by Spanish company Repsol turned out to be dry, a setback to Cuba’s hopes for a big strike that could be a boon for the limping economy, though exploration continues.

Despite recent essays by revolutionary hero Fidel Castro on impending global catastrophe due to climate change, Cuba gets just 3.8 percent of its electricity from renewables, a pittance even by regional standards and far behind global leaders.

In the nearby Dominican Republic, where a 2007 law establishes tax breaks for investment in alternative energy, renewables account for 14 percent of electrical generation. Germany, the gold standard for high-tech green energy, gets 20 percent of its considerably larger electrical consumption from renewables, mostly from wind.

The reality in Cuba today is that wind and solar energy sources are almost exclusively for local consumption and there has been little attempt to expand them to augment the national grid, which is powered mostly by fossil fuels. Scientists say the country lacks the investment and expertise for such a move.

Around the region, examples abound for Cuba to emulate. Central American nations are using hydroelectric facilities to harness the power of rivers. Caribbean islands are passing laws stimulating foreign investment in renewables. Wind and solar farms are popping up where viable. Faraway in Europe, and nearby in the United States, individuals with solar panels can get paid for any extra energy they generate that goes back into the grid.

‘‘Possessing apt natural resources to generate energies is a tremendous boon, but that alone is not enough to create energy,’’ said Cherni.

Another obstacle to boosting renewable energy is a stubbornly fixed mindset that equates development with oil.

Memories are still vivid here of the ‘‘Special Period’’ of the 1990s, when the island’s economy tanked with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ushering in years of hunger, prolonged blackouts and fuel shortages. People thumbed rides to work on the back of bicycles as cars sat idle and empty-tanked.

To cope, Cuba began installing its first solar panels, building small hydroelectric plants, restoring old windmills and extracting gas from animal waste.

But after Chavez’s election in 1998 in oil-rich Venezuela, Cuba once again embraced fossil fuels wholeheartedly with the appearance of a new benefactor and ideological ally willing to help keep the lights on. Today Caracas provides nearly half Cuba’s petroleum needs, shipping about 100,000 barrels of oil a day to the island on beneficial terms while Cuba sends doctors and technical advisers to Venezuela.

‘‘Cuba is a nation that is dependent on oil, yes, but in addition the culture of its leaders and technicians, of its common citizens, is one of fossil fuels,’’ said Alejandro Montesinos, a renewable energy expert at Cubasolar, the island’s chief NGO for sustainable energy.Continued...

View the original article here

Solar, wind energy a missed opportunity for Cuba - Boston Globe

var archivedState=0;

RAMON GORDO, Cuba (AP) — The sleepy country setting that farmer Juan Alonso calls home hasn’t changed much since he was born 74 years ago, with the two rustic wooden houses nestled among palm trees against a backdrop of green hills and clear skies.

Incongruously perched atop the homes are the only visual clues that his 150-acre (60-hectare) farm inhabits the 21st century: the gleaming solar panels that revolutionized the lives of Alonso and his family.

‘‘Just imagine, you toil all day in the field and then when you get home you have to grope around doing things with a gas lantern, with a torch to illuminate the patio at night,’’ Alonso said, describing life during decades past. Now his family has electric lights, a television and a DVD player. ‘‘It’s a change as radical as night to day.’’

Cuba is proud of its success in using alternative energy to bring electricity to isolated hamlets like Ramon Gordo, 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Havana. Some 2,000 schools and at least 400 hospitals are lit up by solar panels in rural areas not plugged into the national grid. But scientists say the island, blessed with year-around sunshine and sea breezes but plagued with chronic energy shortages, could be doing much more on the national level, and that its communist government is missing a golden opportunity to reduce its dependence on subsidized oil from uber-ally Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez is sick with cancer.

It is vital that Cuba expand its energy horizons ‘‘so it doesn’t remain at the mercy of political changes in the region that could affect it adversely,’’ said Judith Cherni, an alternative energy expert at the Imperial College London Center for Environmental Policy.

The urgency to find alternative energy sources was driven home last month when an exploratory offshore oil well drilled by Spanish company Repsol turned out to be dry, a setback to Cuba’s hopes for a big strike that could be a boon for the limping economy, though exploration continues.

Despite recent essays by revolutionary hero Fidel Castro on impending global catastrophe due to climate change, Cuba gets just 3.8 percent of its electricity from renewables, a pittance even by regional standards and far behind global leaders.

In the nearby Dominican Republic, where a 2007 law establishes tax breaks for investment in alternative energy, renewables account for 14 percent of electrical generation. Germany, the gold standard for high-tech green energy, gets 20 percent of its considerably larger electrical consumption from renewables, mostly from wind.

The reality in Cuba today is that wind and solar energy sources are almost exclusively for local consumption and there has been little attempt to expand them to augment the national grid, which is powered mostly by fossil fuels. Scientists say the country lacks the investment and expertise for such a move.

Around the region, examples abound for Cuba to emulate. Central American nations are using hydroelectric facilities to harness the power of rivers. Caribbean islands are passing laws stimulating foreign investment in renewables. Wind and solar farms are popping up where viable. Faraway in Europe, and nearby in the United States, individuals with solar panels can get paid for any extra energy they generate that goes back into the grid.

‘‘Possessing apt natural resources to generate energies is a tremendous boon, but that alone is not enough to create energy,’’ said Cherni.

Another obstacle to boosting renewable energy is a stubbornly fixed mindset that equates development with oil.

Memories are still vivid here of the ‘‘Special Period’’ of the 1990s, when the island’s economy tanked with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ushering in years of hunger, prolonged blackouts and fuel shortages. People thumbed rides to work on the back of bicycles as cars sat idle and empty-tanked.

To cope, Cuba began installing its first solar panels, building small hydroelectric plants, restoring old windmills and extracting gas from animal waste.

But after Chavez’s election in 1998 in oil-rich Venezuela, Cuba once again embraced fossil fuels wholeheartedly with the appearance of a new benefactor and ideological ally willing to help keep the lights on. Today Caracas provides nearly half Cuba’s petroleum needs, shipping about 100,000 barrels of oil a day to the island on beneficial terms while Cuba sends doctors and technical advisers to Venezuela.

‘‘Cuba is a nation that is dependent on oil, yes, but in addition the culture of its leaders and technicians, of its common citizens, is one of fossil fuels,’’ said Alejandro Montesinos, a renewable energy expert at Cubasolar, the island’s chief NGO for sustainable energy.Continued...

View the original article here

Solar, wind energy a missed opportunity for Cuba - Boston Globe

var archivedState=0;

RAMON GORDO, Cuba (AP) — The sleepy country setting that farmer Juan Alonso calls home hasn’t changed much since he was born 74 years ago, with the two rustic wooden houses nestled among palm trees against a backdrop of green hills and clear skies.

Incongruously perched atop the homes are the only visual clues that his 150-acre (60-hectare) farm inhabits the 21st century: the gleaming solar panels that revolutionized the lives of Alonso and his family.

‘‘Just imagine, you toil all day in the field and then when you get home you have to grope around doing things with a gas lantern, with a torch to illuminate the patio at night,’’ Alonso said, describing life during decades past. Now his family has electric lights, a television and a DVD player. ‘‘It’s a change as radical as night to day.’’

Cuba is proud of its success in using alternative energy to bring electricity to isolated hamlets like Ramon Gordo, 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Havana. Some 2,000 schools and at least 400 hospitals are lit up by solar panels in rural areas not plugged into the national grid. But scientists say the island, blessed with year-around sunshine and sea breezes but plagued with chronic energy shortages, could be doing much more on the national level, and that its communist government is missing a golden opportunity to reduce its dependence on subsidized oil from uber-ally Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez is sick with cancer.

It is vital that Cuba expand its energy horizons ‘‘so it doesn’t remain at the mercy of political changes in the region that could affect it adversely,’’ said Judith Cherni, an alternative energy expert at the Imperial College London Center for Environmental Policy.

The urgency to find alternative energy sources was driven home last month when an exploratory offshore oil well drilled by Spanish company Repsol turned out to be dry, a setback to Cuba’s hopes for a big strike that could be a boon for the limping economy, though exploration continues.

Despite recent essays by revolutionary hero Fidel Castro on impending global catastrophe due to climate change, Cuba gets just 3.8 percent of its electricity from renewables, a pittance even by regional standards and far behind global leaders.

In the nearby Dominican Republic, where a 2007 law establishes tax breaks for investment in alternative energy, renewables account for 14 percent of electrical generation. Germany, the gold standard for high-tech green energy, gets 20 percent of its considerably larger electrical consumption from renewables, mostly from wind.

The reality in Cuba today is that wind and solar energy sources are almost exclusively for local consumption and there has been little attempt to expand them to augment the national grid, which is powered mostly by fossil fuels. Scientists say the country lacks the investment and expertise for such a move.

Around the region, examples abound for Cuba to emulate. Central American nations are using hydroelectric facilities to harness the power of rivers. Caribbean islands are passing laws stimulating foreign investment in renewables. Wind and solar farms are popping up where viable. Faraway in Europe, and nearby in the United States, individuals with solar panels can get paid for any extra energy they generate that goes back into the grid.

‘‘Possessing apt natural resources to generate energies is a tremendous boon, but that alone is not enough to create energy,’’ said Cherni.

Another obstacle to boosting renewable energy is a stubbornly fixed mindset that equates development with oil.

Memories are still vivid here of the ‘‘Special Period’’ of the 1990s, when the island’s economy tanked with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ushering in years of hunger, prolonged blackouts and fuel shortages. People thumbed rides to work on the back of bicycles as cars sat idle and empty-tanked.

To cope, Cuba began installing its first solar panels, building small hydroelectric plants, restoring old windmills and extracting gas from animal waste.

But after Chavez’s election in 1998 in oil-rich Venezuela, Cuba once again embraced fossil fuels wholeheartedly with the appearance of a new benefactor and ideological ally willing to help keep the lights on. Today Caracas provides nearly half Cuba’s petroleum needs, shipping about 100,000 barrels of oil a day to the island on beneficial terms while Cuba sends doctors and technical advisers to Venezuela.

‘‘Cuba is a nation that is dependent on oil, yes, but in addition the culture of its leaders and technicians, of its common citizens, is one of fossil fuels,’’ said Alejandro Montesinos, a renewable energy expert at Cubasolar, the island’s chief NGO for sustainable energy.Continued...

View the original article here

Solar, wind energy a missed opportunity for Cuba - Boston Globe

var archivedState=0;

RAMON GORDO, Cuba (AP) — The sleepy country setting that farmer Juan Alonso calls home hasn’t changed much since he was born 74 years ago, with the two rustic wooden houses nestled among palm trees against a backdrop of green hills and clear skies.

Incongruously perched atop the homes are the only visual clues that his 150-acre (60-hectare) farm inhabits the 21st century: the gleaming solar panels that revolutionized the lives of Alonso and his family.

‘‘Just imagine, you toil all day in the field and then when you get home you have to grope around doing things with a gas lantern, with a torch to illuminate the patio at night,’’ Alonso said, describing life during decades past. Now his family has electric lights, a television and a DVD player. ‘‘It’s a change as radical as night to day.’’

Cuba is proud of its success in using alternative energy to bring electricity to isolated hamlets like Ramon Gordo, 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Havana. Some 2,000 schools and at least 400 hospitals are lit up by solar panels in rural areas not plugged into the national grid. But scientists say the island, blessed with year-around sunshine and sea breezes but plagued with chronic energy shortages, could be doing much more on the national level, and that its communist government is missing a golden opportunity to reduce its dependence on subsidized oil from uber-ally Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez is sick with cancer.

It is vital that Cuba expand its energy horizons ‘‘so it doesn’t remain at the mercy of political changes in the region that could affect it adversely,’’ said Judith Cherni, an alternative energy expert at the Imperial College London Center for Environmental Policy.

The urgency to find alternative energy sources was driven home last month when an exploratory offshore oil well drilled by Spanish company Repsol turned out to be dry, a setback to Cuba’s hopes for a big strike that could be a boon for the limping economy, though exploration continues.

Despite recent essays by revolutionary hero Fidel Castro on impending global catastrophe due to climate change, Cuba gets just 3.8 percent of its electricity from renewables, a pittance even by regional standards and far behind global leaders.

In the nearby Dominican Republic, where a 2007 law establishes tax breaks for investment in alternative energy, renewables account for 14 percent of electrical generation. Germany, the gold standard for high-tech green energy, gets 20 percent of its considerably larger electrical consumption from renewables, mostly from wind.

The reality in Cuba today is that wind and solar energy sources are almost exclusively for local consumption and there has been little attempt to expand them to augment the national grid, which is powered mostly by fossil fuels. Scientists say the country lacks the investment and expertise for such a move.

Around the region, examples abound for Cuba to emulate. Central American nations are using hydroelectric facilities to harness the power of rivers. Caribbean islands are passing laws stimulating foreign investment in renewables. Wind and solar farms are popping up where viable. Faraway in Europe, and nearby in the United States, individuals with solar panels can get paid for any extra energy they generate that goes back into the grid.

‘‘Possessing apt natural resources to generate energies is a tremendous boon, but that alone is not enough to create energy,’’ said Cherni.

Another obstacle to boosting renewable energy is a stubbornly fixed mindset that equates development with oil.

Memories are still vivid here of the ‘‘Special Period’’ of the 1990s, when the island’s economy tanked with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ushering in years of hunger, prolonged blackouts and fuel shortages. People thumbed rides to work on the back of bicycles as cars sat idle and empty-tanked.

To cope, Cuba began installing its first solar panels, building small hydroelectric plants, restoring old windmills and extracting gas from animal waste.

But after Chavez’s election in 1998 in oil-rich Venezuela, Cuba once again embraced fossil fuels wholeheartedly with the appearance of a new benefactor and ideological ally willing to help keep the lights on. Today Caracas provides nearly half Cuba’s petroleum needs, shipping about 100,000 barrels of oil a day to the island on beneficial terms while Cuba sends doctors and technical advisers to Venezuela.

‘‘Cuba is a nation that is dependent on oil, yes, but in addition the culture of its leaders and technicians, of its common citizens, is one of fossil fuels,’’ said Alejandro Montesinos, a renewable energy expert at Cubasolar, the island’s chief NGO for sustainable energy.Continued...

View the original article here

Boston Business Journal honors athenahealth as a 2012 “Best Places to Work” winner - Business Wire

WATERTOWN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN) (the "Company"), a leading provider of cloud-based practice management, electronic health record (EHR), and care coordination services to medical groups, today announced that the Boston Business Journal named the Company one of the Best Places to Work in Massachusetts in its tenth annual regional awards program. The honor recognizes athenahealth’s achievements in creating a positive work environment that attracts and retains employees through a combination of employee satisfaction, working conditions, and company culture.

“After all, our ability to attract and retain the brightest software engineers, designers, problem solvers, and critical thinkers while fostering a culture of innovation is very important to the company’s growing success.”

athenahealth was one of over 400 companies to qualify for consideration based on a two-stage nomination process and the results of employee-satisfaction surveys taken throughout March and April.

“We are honored to be recognized as a BBJ Best Place to Work for the fourth time in seven years, which is especially exciting given our ongoing explosive growth,” said Leslie Brunner, Senior Vice President of People and Process at athenahealth. “At athenahealth, we depend on smart people who thrive in a collaborative environment where they can teach and learn. Our culture is one in which athenistas dream big, achieve big, and then flex to adjust to the changes we have made. We work at a fast pace, and we’re driven by a passion to do well only by doing good. This work feels incredibly rewarding for us.”

“Our vision is to make healthcare work as it should---and it’s important to emphasize that we are a technology company as much as we are a health care company,” added Jeremy Delinsky, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at athenahealth. “After all, our ability to attract and retain the brightest software engineers, designers, problem solvers, and critical thinkers while fostering a culture of innovation is very important to the company’s growing success.”

The survey project was launched in January by the Boston Business Journal in conjunction with market research firm Quantum Workplace of Omaha, Nebraska. Companies were evaluated on the results of more than 18,000 employee-satisfaction surveys. Employees answered questionnaires that addressed such factors as their pride in their company, company encouragement, support, recognition of achievement, and relationships with co-workers and supervisors. The results were analyzed and scored by assigning points to each question.

“Our Best Places to Work event will again recognize the importance of cultivating a great workplace culture as a competitive advantage,” said Chris McIntosh, publisher of the Boston Business Journal. “Companies on our list can be justifiably proud of creating a high level of workplace satisfaction during an economy where traditional rewards like big raises and bonuses aren’t as easy to give. In good times and in bad, our results validate how the creation of the right corporate culture can create powerful business advantages. Employees are proud to work for companies that are about more than just business.”

The top 25 companies in three size categories—small (20-100 employees), midsize (101-500 employees), and large (more than 500 employees)—will be awarded during a breakfast on June 1st at the BCEC and profiled in a special supplement of the Boston Business Journal. For more event details, please visit http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/event/63481.

For more information on athenahealth career opportunities, visit our careers page: http://www.athenahealth.com/careers/.

About the Boston Business Journal

The Boston Business Journal is Greater Boston’s leading source of business news, information and events, reaching readers through the weekly print publication, the website bostonbusinessjournal.com and e-mail products. The BBJ also prints the annual Book of Lists—the region’s top resource for business decision-makers seeking information about potential clients, suppliers and partners.

The Boston Business Journal is published by American City Business Journals, the nation’s largest publisher of metropolitan business news.

About athenahealth

athenahealth, Inc. is a leading provider of cloud-based business services for physician practices. athenahealth's service offerings are based on proprietary web-native practice management and electronic health record (EHR) software, a continuously updated payer knowledge-base, integrated back-office service operations, and care coordination services. For more information, please visit http://www.athenahealth.com or call 888-652-8200.

View the original article here

Governor, business leaders tout internship programs - Boston Herald

State officials and Hub business leaders implored more than 200 representatives from local companies and colleges today to broaden their internship opportunities for students to promote their talents and retain them in the state’s workforce.

“The way to win the future is to make use of our commitments towards the brain power here in the Commonwealth — our students. We have the best talent pool in the world,” said Gov. Deval Patrick at a forum titled “Internships: A Win-Win for Employers, Students and Academic Institutions” this morning at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. “We need to encourage our people to stay here or to come back to Massachusetts when they finish school elsewhere. ... We need to work together across the public and private sectors to build and retain talent for the innovation economy of today and also of tomorrow. One of the ways that I’m asking you to do this is through internship programs in your companies.”

Patrick said state officials have partnered with the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and a local company, Experience, to launch a free web portal — www.massitsallhere.com/internships — where students can upload resumes and apply for internships in just a few clicks. Businesses can also post internship opportunities, as well as peruse resumes already posted to the search engine.

Nearly 2,000 students have signed up on the site for internships “in every industry imaginable,” Patrick said.

“We want this to be a clearinghouse of opportunities for young minds and a talent pool for companies like yours,” Patrick said. “Make use of the brain power we have here. Allow these students to work in your laboratories, in your offices, in your health-care facilities, in your think tanks. Let them experience what it’s like to be in conference rooms with people of the depth of experience and range of talent that you all represent and that you align with at your own companies. Let them experience and contribute to your design centers. Recognize the state that we all have in them and then help them recognize the state they have in us, and we all win.”

Paul Guzzi, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, which offers a free service called Chamber Intern Connect, said the way to keep student talent here is to “establish the glue between students and employers during their college careers.”

Boston Fed Chief Operating Officer Ken Montgomery, who moderated the forum, added that the Fed posted 20 intern positions in February for which they already received 2,500 applications.

“One of the real benefits is letting students know about other companies in the area,” Montgomery said. “They don’t know what opportunities are available.”

Though 28.5 percent of New England college students hail from outside the region and Yolanda Kodryzycki, vice president and director of the New England Public Policy Center at the Boston Fed, said the leading reason for students leaving after college was a lack of job opportunities.

“They don’t think there are jobs for them in the region,” she said. “It’s going to get harder as recovery takes hold ... to recruit the workers that you need. Educating our own is very, very important but it’s the well-designed internship programs that can make the difference in the foreseeable future.”

Kodryzycki added that the Boston Fed has made “active use” of internships. Out of 947 current employees, 44 — or 4.6 percent — began as interns, including five officers.

A panel of representatives from the academic and business sectors also offered advice for successful internship programs, including making sure clear job descriptions were outlined for interns; putting a focus on recruiting students at key colleges and universities; and establishing relationships with them to lay the foundation of entry-level hiring.

“It needs to be a real role,” said Maribeth Nash, State Street Corp. senior vice president and chief talent officer. “This is not the person who gets coffee for everyone. This is the individual in the meeting having coffee with employees.”

Outside the forum, Patrick told the Herald that internship programs were reflective of the state’s long-term interests.

“We have right now a significant skills gap — lots of jobs going unfilled because employers aren’t able to find the talent they need. As we grow this innovation economy we need to pay attention in making sure that we can continue to refresh it with the talent we need, so internships are a great way for that to happen,” Patrick said. “The other thing is we have an awful lot of really smart people who come here for school and being able to hang onto them into the future is good for us.”

The governor, who was vacationing in the U.S. Virgin Islands last week during the Back Bay power outage, also fielded questions about the blackout.

View the original article here