High Schoolers complete Summer College Internship Pilot Program

Seven Eureka County High School graduates recently completed the inaugural class of the county’s Summer College Internship Pilot Program. The group included five members of the Class of 2026 and two 2025 graduates who returned home from college for summer break. They spent the summer working paid county jobs in the community, leaving with real experience, new skills and certificates of completion in hand.

The pilot program, championed by Commission Chairman Rich McKay and the board of commissioners and built by the human resources department, placed interns in seven departments: EMS, IT, HR, Public Works, Juvenile Probation, the Clerk Recorder’s Office and the Opera House/Museum. Interns took on real work, from field projects to front-office operations, while learning directly from county employees about what public service careers look like up close.

“It’s been great to see these students come back from college and spend their summer working in their own community,” McKay said. “They’ve contributed to our departments, learned from our employees and gotten a firsthand look at careers they may not have known were available here. We’d love to see some of them come back and build their careers in Eureka County.”

The program is an investment in keeping homegrown talent local. Many young people leave rural communities for school and never look back. This program plants a different seed with a summer spent serving neighbors, a paycheck earned at home and a clear picture of the careers waiting right here.

Congratulations to our first class of interns. We hope this summer is the first chapter of a much longer Eureka County story.