Best Practices
The Internship Program works with almost all of the academic departments on campus. We have compiled a few of the best practices that we have come across that are used accross the campus and have presented them here to provide suggestions for the internship program in your department.
Registration for Credit
- Place a departmental hold on all internship classes. This helps to ensure that only students with approved internships are enrolled in the class.
- Require stduents to register through the Internship Program. Internship Coordinators can work with departmental faculty to make sure all of the paperwork is in order before students enroll.
- Some departments have established an email approval procedure for internships. This helps to expedite the registration process.
Internship Classes
- Offer set classes that meet occassionally throught the semester (3-6 times) which are supplemented by online discussions through BlackBoard and other assignments.
- Create assignments that reinfoce not only the experience, but the importance of other internship procedures. Require paperwork to be completed, site visits, evaluations, and other assignments be completed as part of the student's grade.
- Utilize incompletes when all of the necessary paperwork has not been completed.
- Allow for the internship class to count towards the faculty's total credit load.
- Offer internship classes in the fall, spring and summer semester.
- Consider creating a "pre-internship" class or workshop that will help students find internships the semester before they take an internship class.
