Four years ago, hanging out on the streets of South Providence, Chris Lawson was headed for trouble.

Now the high school senior is finishing up a two-year internship at PC Troubleshooters Inc., where he is leading a project to refurbish and donate 14 computers to charity.

“With the real-world, experiential learning that Chris is getting here, he’s going to have a leg up, because he has something to put on his resume,” said Lisa Shorr, director of marketing for PC Troubleshooters, a Warwick-based technology support-services provider.

The story of Lawson’s turnaround offers hope for both Rhode Island’s challenged secondary education system and the state’s technology sector, which is focused on building relationships between local tech firms and high schools in the hope of heading off a shortage of technology workers in coming years.

Lawson was failing classes and getting into trouble as a middle school student in Providence’s public school system, Shorr said.

Entering high school, Lawson’s family enrolled him at the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (The Met School), a free charter school in South Providence that educates students through personalized curricula with a strong emphasis on internships and family engagement.

For the past two years, Lawson has worked as an intern at PC Troubleshooters, where he’s been closely mentored by Gordon Tempest, the company’s service manager. In that time, Lawson has learned many of the skills needed to get an entry-level job as a computer technician, Shorr said.

Now Lawson is using those skills to complete his senior thesis project: He is refurbishing 14 used computers and donating them to cash-strapped community shelters and social service agencies throughout Providence.

Hodess Construction Corp., a client of PC Troubleshooters in North Attleboro, Mass., donated seven sets of computers, monitors and keyboards after learning about Lawson’s project. Lawson then coordinated the donation of seven more computers through various people at the Met School.

He is currently in the midst of formatting each computer and installing new software, donated by PC Troubleshooters, to allow for Internet access and word-processing capabilities. Lawson’s targets for donation of the computers include Crossroads Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Food Bank and several local Boys and Girls Clubs.

Shorr said Lawson is currently considering college options and plans to begin pursuing a degree in computer science this fall.

More such technology internships for high school students are needed to help Rhode Island companies find entry-level job candidates and minimize the impact of a looming nationwide shortage of tech workers, said Kathie Shields, executive director of the Tech Collective, a nonprofit alliance of Rhode Island information technology and biotech industry companies.

A report published last year by the organization identified a gap between the level of education that Rhode Island students are leaving school with and the level that is needed in today’s work force.

Among other findings, a survey of state employers found that many face a shortage of job candidates who possess the requisite technical skills and a satisfactory amount of ‘people skills’ – particularly in the information-technology sector.

Nationally, the problem is expected to worsen in the next three to six years, because the number of students studying to enter technology careers is declining, Shields said.

“We’ve definitely got to encourage and embrace any kind of interest [in technology] that’s at the high school level, to make sure it doesn’t slip away from those student who might have an interest in pursuing a career in this area,” she said. “There [are] so many myths about the jobs out there in the IT world – that they’re going overseas, that it’s a troubled industry – that we find even students that get interested at the middle school level, then at the high school level get directed in other directions.”

Tech Collective is currently working to launch a pilot program this summer that will match high school and college students with internship opportunities and provide companies with resources needed to accept and train interns, Shields said.

Companies expected to participate in the pilot program include FM Global and Hasbro, which has not provided internships to high school students in the past but recently changed that strategy, she said.

Companies that have effective internship programs in place are often able to groom their interns for hire as entry-level employees – a recruitment process much cheaper than finding new employees on the open job market.

But even companies that provide internships to college students are often hesitant to do the same for high school students, she said.

“They don’t know how to engage them,” Shields said. “They don’t know if they should start with, ‘This is how you use the coffee machine, this is how you use the color copier, and this is how you turn on the computer and access your e-mail.’”

Lawson’s professional grooming at PC Troubleshooters went beyond technical training to include coaching on proper work attire and how to remain professional while dealing with clients experiencing crisis situations, Shorr said.

Seven of the company’s eight technicians began as interns, including Leonel Padilla, a technician who interned at PC Troubleshooters while a student at the Met School, who is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree at New England Institute of Technology.

In addition to Lawson, the firm also has another high school intern from the Textron/Chamber of Commerce Providence Public Charter School.

“We really try very hard to work with them, and it’s a great way to find out what their skills are and their strengths,” Shorr said. “For us, it’s worked out beautifully because we’ve hired a lot of them.” •