Rockwood Graduates Provide Mentorship for Marquette Student During PIE Summer Internship

In the summer of 2017, Marquette High student Vinai Kumar participated in the Rockwood Partners in Education (PIE) Summer Internship program, working in a microbial lab at Washington University in St. Louis.

This summer, Kumar and fellow 2018 Marquette graduates Akash Sarkar and Neel Bute – co-owners of Ad Astra Autism Centers – were interested in providing a similar experience for a current Rockwood student. That’s how rising Marquette senior Dhruv Bhosekar found himself joining the Ad Astra team as a PIE summer intern, following much the same path as Kumar eight years ago.

“What’s really nice about PIE is it gives you the context and opens the door as to this is what it looks like to work with colleagues who know a lot more than you in a scenario where you’re trying to learn and advance whatever the project is at hand,” Kumar said. “It also really helps you gain an interest in what you’re doing and gives you this guarded opportunity to take risks.”

The PIE Summer Internship program places students in a career area of their interest leading into their senior year of high school. The internship provides students with career exploration opportunities while allowing them to gain practical, real-world experience in a field of interest by partnering with business professionals.

Bhosekar’s interest lies in computer science, and his main task for the summer will be helping design programs to automate administrative processes, such as sending out notifications to parents of the students learning at Ad Astra.

“I have the opportunity to gain new skills, and then also be in a business setting and help me understand what it’s like to have a job in a field I’d like to explore in the future,” Bhosekar said. “I also get the opportunity to gain tactical skills, the opportunity to develop the technical side and explore that a little bit more. I like being able to solve problems by using automations or technical solutions. Just seeing that effect in the real world and on people in general is pretty cool.”

Ad Astra Autism Centers provides applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy to help children with autism learn and grow. ABA therapy helps children with autism develop essential skills such as communication and behavior management.

After graduating college and moving back to the St. Louis area, Sarkar said he and his partners saw the need for more services reaching students with autism. Sarkar had served as a registered behavior technician, which nurtured his affinity for the field.

The organization is currently based out of a center in Overland, with plans to expand to Fenton and St. Ann in the near future.

“We did some calls with providers and families when we were first starting and, sometimes, kids were on the waitlist for six-plus months. There was a huge need in the St. Louis area, and we wanted to address that,” Sarkar said. “We also saw there was a huge problem with employee retention because of job satisfaction: a lot of burnout in the field. We’ve tried to alleviate that, which is actually why we brought in Dhruv as well. It's lessening that administrative burden of our clinicians and techs.”

In addition to his primary tasks, Bhosekar is also hoping to get the opportunity to dive into some of the data collected at the center and analyze it for trends in student performance and efficiency among the center’s behavior technicians and analysts.

As a PIE internship alumnus, Kumar wants to see Bhosekar make this opportunity his own.

“We see a lot of ourselves in Dhruv. We see a lot of the tenacity and ambition we had in someone like Dhruv, who is wanting the same opportunity and experience to push their horizons,” Kumar said. “If there are avenues where he feels like he can apply the insight and skills he has, or the curiosity he has to say, ‘Have you thought about this whole new venue,’ we really want to encourage that out of him. We think that’s the best way that someone can get an experience out of this.”

Bhosekar, like Kumar, is a former Wild Horse Elementary and Crestview Middle student. Sarkar attended Ballwin Elementary, Selvidge Middle and Marquette through graduation, and Bute moved into Rockwood before his freshman year at Marquette.

All three alums are enjoying the opportunity to pass on their knowledge.

“It’s really interesting to go back and help out students from our school,” Sarkar said. “Dhruv has a lot of opportunity to grow from here. Getting an opportunity like this within a company is good real-world experience for him that most kids would never get at this age. We’re throwing him into a lot of these things – obviously with some help – and seeing how much he can get done. The training wheels are basically off for him.”­­­­

“It’s definitely different than the rigidity of school and taking classes,” Bhosekar added. “This is more like an opportunity to apply the skills you’ve learned in school and be able to explore, hone your curiosity and be able to build something meaningful over the summer.”