Internship experience is rewarding, leads to full-time position

As a young girl, Nikki Wood often went to the splash pad at a park in her hometown of New Lexington.

And now today, as a recent graduate of Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service with a Master of Public Administration degree, Wood hopes to bring some of that youthful joy to the kids in Southern Ohio.

Wood spent the summer in Chillicothe as an intern with the city through a program with the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) and in partnership with the Voinovich School.

She hit the ground running, working with the city’s planning and development team to help them secure a grant that would fund the construction of a splash pad in a local park. Wood says that the MPA program set her up for success.

“It takes a really long time to get things done in the public sector, because you have to go through so many hoops,” she says. “But I think with all my classes coming to fruition, especially some of the leadership courses, they were all super helpful in navigating that new world.”

MORPC is a metropolitan planning organization that works with hundreds of local governments around central Ohio in areas such as planning public transportation, green infrastructure, connected hiking trails, and more. For 10 to 14 weeks during the summer, MORPC places approximately 60 college interns with local governments in the region to assist with various administrative and technical tasks, as well as research and public outreach. The Voinovich School partners with MORPC to place interns across the Southeast Ohio area.

After the internship ended, Wood was able to parley that experience into a full-time position as a development coordinator with the non-profit Foundation for Appalachian Ohio, whose CEO, Cara Dingus Brook, also received her MPA from the Voinovich School. Needless to say, the bonding came easily.

“Everyone in the MPA program talks about how important it is to have connections with people and keep those connections strong,” Wood says. “The reason I have my current job, and the reason I got that internship, was because of my professors at the Voinovich school.”