Assurant Employee Benefits, a Kansas City, Mo.-based division of the insurance company Assurant, will lease space at Kansas University’s Bioscience and Technology Business Center, becoming the facility’s seventh tenant.

The space will be used to establish an internship program at the center, which will house between six and eight students from KU’s computer science and computer engineering degree programs. Tim Bachta, application development director for Assurant Employee Benefits, said the company won’t place any full-time staff members at the site permanently, though several employees will visit the site.

“The hope is to transition the interns in to full-time employees as openings come up,” Bachta said.

The company already has five interns signed up for the program, Bachta said, and has a few more spots available for the paid internships.

The interns will be working on programming projects and will communicate with developers in Kansas City; they also will test applications produced by the company, Bachta said.

Assurant, a Fortune 500 company, is the second BTBC tenant to establish an internship program with KU’s School of Engineering. Garmin, the Olathe-based navigation company, has a similar program.

The company will move into the BTBC Main Facility, 2029 Becker Drive, on Jan. 1. After the move, the Main Facility will be 75 percent full and will house 60 employees.

“This is exactly what we envisioned when we created the BTBC: companies coming here to access university talent that doesn’t exist anywhere else,” Matthew McClorey, the center’s president, said in a written statement. “In this case, that talent is School of Engineering students.”