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What is an internship and who qualifies? An internship is designed for students pursuing either the B.S. in Technical and Professional Communication or the B.A. in English and Professional Communication. In particular, an internship provides the student who has no "hands-on" experience in technical and professional communication valuable professional experience in the workplace. The internship may involve extended work on one project or it may include a variety of shorter assignments that technical and professional communicators do for a living. In all cases, the student works with one sponsoring organization. Sample internships might include work on manuals, online documentation, report editing, proposals, training materials, project reports, multimedia presentations, and marketing materials. Many other communication projects would also qualify. An internship is worth 3 semester credit hours. In order to qualify for an internship, a student must have a "B" or better average in technical communication courses, and that student must have completed approximately 50% of the technical communication course work (19 hours). Each student is responsible for finding an internship, but the department will help in the effort. The student intern should work at least 120 hours, and the student’s advisor monitors the internship. Since internships are learning experiences, they may be unpaid; but since the intern will do actual work, paid internships are also appropriate. How do I apply for an internship? 1. You submit to the Program Coordinator a general description of the internship including reasons why you wish to do the internship. The internship description should include the following information: • when the internship will be served (beginning and closing dates) • types of tasks to be done and skills to be learned • name, title, address, and phone number of company supervisor Note: The description must be submitted at the beginning of the semester during which you plan to pre-register for the internship. 2. The Program Coordinator informs you in writing as to whether or not the internship has been approved. 3. You are assigned a faculty advisor once the internship has been approved. 4. You submit to your faculty advisor a memo of agreement from the company supervisor that describes the internship. This memo should contain the following information: • number of work hours included in the internship • beginning and ending dates of the internship • activities to be performed during the internship 5. You pre-register for 3 hours of internship credit. What do you do to complete the internship? 1. Maintain close contact with the faculty advisor when the internship is taking place 2. Turn in three progress reports, the first during week 4 of the semester in which the internship is taking place, the second in week 8, and the third in week 12 3. During the final week of the semester, submit a log or notebook of activities/tasks done during the internship 4. Submit two final reports to your faculty advisor by the date assigned by the advisor as a deadline: a. the product or products (work done during the internship) b. a final memo report summarizing the internship experience
The
English, Technical Communication, and Media Arts Department is a part of
Southern Polytechnic State
University and can be contacted at
TCOM@spsu.edu. |
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