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Career Development: Finding Internships
The search for appropriate internships involves effort on the part of students, the career development coordinator and faculty. Students perform research to identify opportunities of special interest; the career development coordinators advise students about desirable opportunities and assist them in preparing to pursue these opportunities; and faculty suggest agencies in which opportunities are known to exist. The career development coordinators and faculty initiate contacts with organizations on behalf of La Follette School students interested in internships and are regularly contacted by agencies and other employers offering internships.
Accepting an Internship
Upon receiving internship offers, students who wish to receive internship credit consult with the career development coordinators. Once the coordinator is confident that an internship will provide a valuable experience for the student in terms of the internship’s applicability to the student’s program and career aspirations, she requests from the employing agency a letter of agreement for the internship. In addition, students provide the career development coordinators with position or project descriptions, as relevant. Students assume responsibility for travel and housing arrangements associated with the internship. Students can choose to earn academic credit for the internship.
Organizational Setting
Students hold internships at all levels of government, in non-profit agencies, and in the private sector. In addition, La Follette School students have interned throughout the United States, as well as overseas. La Follette School faculty and Career Development Coordinators encourage students to seek internship experiences in any organization that offers significant experience in a government policy or program. Internships in partisan organizations are discouraged, however.
Internship Supervision
Internships are approved for credit when the student, the employing agency, the career development coordinator and the associate director have signed a formal written agreement that sets forth the details of the experience, including a detailed job description, the tasks to which the intern will be assigned, hours of work, and length of the internship. The agency will complete an evaluation of the intern’s performance and provide it to career development coordinator. The evaluation will be used to advise students.
Terms of Service and Hours
Students holding summer internships for academic credit must work 40 hours per week for a minimum of eight weeks. For accredited internships in the fall or spring semester, students must work a minimum of 13 hours per week during the semester in which they enroll in PA 827.
Criteria Used for Academic Credit Approval
Approval of a position for academic credit is based on a number of criteria: the student’s satisfactory academic progress, type of agency, hours of work, project and tasks performed in the position as specified in an agreement with the supervisor, and the relationship of the internship to the student’s degree program and field.
Many governmental and nonprofit organizations advertise “internship” positions. Students are encouraged to explore these opportunities but to be aware that such positions may or may not meet the La Follette School requirements for internship credit. Awarding credit for work is entirely a La Follette School decision. Such credit may be given to positions not labeled “internships” by the employing organization, and credit may be denied to positions that are labeled “internships.”
Requests for internship credit on a retroactive basis are approved only under exceptional circumstances. When retroactive credit is approved, some substantial new independent work must be performed during the semester in which the credit is earned, in addition to the regularly required internship paper. This may involve presentations in seminars or brown bag discussions or additional research on a topic related to the internship.