Earn, learn, belong: Inside Dent Education's career-connected learning model

By Micky Wolf, Executive Director of Dent Education.

Dent Education is a Baltimore-based nonprofit that runs "Earn-to-Learn" paid innovation internships with youth ages 14-24, blending career-connected learning, mentors and community, entrepreneurial mindsets, and hands-on skill-building in areas like 3D printing, AI, product design, content creation, and design thinking.

Youth are guided by relationship-oriented coaches - local educators, entrepreneurs, or industry professionals, through structured, yet flexible multi-week curricula. Program cycles are both in the summer—Dent’s flagship 120-hour “Bet on Baltimore” summer internship—and during the school year, including afterschool and work-study, that range from 160-300 hours. Youth, called Denters, earn industry-recognized credentials (IRC) like Adobe’s Content Creation and Marketing (CC&M IRC) and the new AI x Design Thinking - Early Career IRC from IDEO U. Through this, Dent Education intentionally aligns with Maryland's push for more students to graduate with credentials or apprenticeships.

Dent Education tracks include:

• Accelerate Your Dent - youth launch their own businesses and social ventures;
• Made@Dent - a youth-driven custom product studio that sells gifts, swag, and awards to clients and an e-commerce site; and
• Content Creation & Marketing - youth earn the Adobe CC&M IRC and then advance to apply their newly earned credentialed skills in paid “Denternships” with local employers 

Beyond training, Dent Education functions as an intermediary between youth and the local innovation economy. It has built a network of over 350 community and industry partners who provide mentorship, real-world project input, career exposure, and Denternship placements. Dent ends the false choice many under-resourced youth face: work a job, earn now OR build community, skills, and confidence in a youth-centered program. At Dent, they do all that’s needed for long-term career success: build “I Can” confidence, innovation skills, real-world project workplace experience, and social capital.

For instance, Dent’s NextGen Innovators Initiative is a collaborative workforce initiative that scales its deep, career-connected learning model, offering credentials and employer internships through partnerships that launched the AI x Design Thinking - Early Career IRC and the Career-Connected Learning (CCL) Playbook and Train-the-Trainer model. Dent also partnered with IDEO U to launch a credential that validates skills in the human-centered design process and leveraging AI as a tool in their toolbox, not their replacement, through a portfolio of work, professional articulation, AI reflection, and exam.

Partnering with Maryland Out-of-School Time (MOST) Network and CareerBound (a collaboration of Baltimore’s Promise, Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Employment Development, and Baltimore City Public Schools), Dent helped launch the CCL Playbook and trained 25 out-of-school time (OST) organizations in Spring 2026. This helped OST organizations integrate credentials and high-quality work-based learning into their programs, including prioritizing deep relationships and specific expertise, selecting credentials, integrating employer partners, measuring impact, and developing high-quality programs focused on youth inclusion.

Since 2017, Dent has supported 1,000+ Baltimore youth who have earned more than $1.3 million in stipends. An independent evaluation by Johns Hopkins University shows strong, sustained gains in entrepreneurial mindsets, creative confidence, and problem-solving mindset. What’s more: 96% of alumni graduate high school (compared to the 77% Baltimore City Public Schools average), 77% enroll in college (vs. 45% average), and 92% of alumni continue to believe in their ability to shape the world around them. In short, Dent Education supports pathways to upward mobility in STEM by connecting underserved youth with career exploration, credentialing, long-term social capital, and paid internship placement.