Maryland State Delegate Sandy Rosenberg (D-41) introduced legislation to create the Maryland Technology Internship Program (MTIP) in 2014 after being inspired by UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski’s December 2013 commentary in the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore through student eyes. House Bill 1317 passed the legislature unanimously.
The goal of the MTIP is to help Maryland retain top talent by increasing the number of paid technical internships offered in the state. UMBC administers the program, which offers financial assistance to technology-based businesses across the state to enable them to hire more interns.
During the 2018 legislative session, Delegate Rosenberg and House of Delegates Speaker Pro Tem Adrienne Jones, ’76 (D-10) introduced House Bill 527, to amend the MTIP to include larger technology companies as well as state and local agencies. Again, the legislation passed unanimously, and Governor Larry Hogan signed the bill on May 8, 2018. With support from Delegates Rosenberg and Jones, Governor Hogan included funding in the FY 2019 budget to launch MTIP. The program’s first interns started working during the fall semester of 2018. Again, in 2020 the Bill was amended to lower the intern GPA requirement to 2.50. You can find the updated bill under HB307. To date, MTIP has reimbursed over 200 unique organizations for over 1,000 technical internship positions.