PRESQUE ISLE – Area diesel hydraulics students have an opportunity to earn college credit while receiving hands-on work experience thanks to a training partnership agreement signed recently by officials with Northern Maine Community College and the state Department of Transportation.

The agreement creates supervised, paid internships at DOT for students in NMCC’s diesel hydraulics program, though it also allows internships to be extended to students in other programs who could benefit from the experience.

The agreement also offers the possibility of future employment, officials said last week.

“These types of experiences provide an excellent opportunity for a student to begin to develop a relationship with an employer who’s going to be potentially an employer when the student graduates,” said Brian McDougal, NMCC’s trade and technical occupations department chairman.

Richard Moir, DOT’s fleet transportation operations manager, said his department proposed the internship program to NMCC earlier this year based on a recent lack of qualified applicants for positions throughout the state.

“It’s not just a problem in this area, it’s kind of a statewide problem we’ve had in the last few years,” Moir said. “That helped to facilitate us looking at other avenues to obtain the qualified people we were looking for.”

Moir said DOT is looking to establish a similar program at another community college.

“In our partnership with NMCC, we’re getting educated technicians when they graduate, and through working with our program, we get to mold them to our operations so that if we have an opening, there is a good potential for them to be hired,” he said.

Officials pulled the program together in a matter of months in order to offer the first internship this summer.

Students accepted by the internship program – which is primarily designed for someone between the first and second year of studies – will complete and document 70 hours of work for each semester credit hour they earn, up to three, file weekly written reports, prepare a portfolio under the direction of their NMCC internship facilitator and perform duties assigned by the DOT workshop supervisor, McDougal said.

The program’s first student, Tyler Michaud of Presque Isle, will be working under Moir, who is based in Caribou.

Moir said that Michaud will spend 210 hours this summer helping out with a wide range of vehicle maintenance activities – everything from oil changes to complete brake jobs on heavy equipment.

“This will be, more or less, what he’ll be faced with when he gets out in to the work force,” Moir said.

McDougal said the program is good news for both students and the college.

“We’re very pleased that the DOT would consider the quality of our training programs and be looking at the possibility of hiring some of our students and graduates,” McDougal said. “This certainly is an indication that we’re considered an excellent training site.”