Table of Contents

Before signing a student into XYZ 495 ...

Check to see that all prerequisites are satisfied by the student.

  • College requirements (minimum 30 cr., minimum 2.0 CGPA)
  • Program- and course-specific requirements

Assist the student in preparing his or her Internship Proposal.

The proposal:

  • Identifies roles and expectations for each member of the student intern's learning network—instructor (you!), host site supervisor, and student-intern
  • Ensures that each member of the learning network understands the experiential and the educational facets of the internship—and their connection.
The proposal is designed to help the student build the intellectual scaffolding needed to frame an academic internship. The proposal development process is iterative; its purpose is to spark and then guide a conversation between you and the student about the academic focus of a proposed field experience.

You may want to share the Internships POSTER TEMPLATE and the POSTER EVALUATION RUBRIC located on this page with your student to offer a framework for proposal-writing and for discussion.

  • Please encourage your students to present posters based on their internship at Penn State Altoona’s annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Fair in the spring semester, or at the Altoona Expo in the fall.

Questions/issues to consider when reviewing a draft internship proposal

  • What connections with the student's degree program are evident? What discipline-based knowledge or questions, theories, skills or perspectives could inform the roles and responsibilities of the internship?
  • Can the proposal be customized to better fit the interests, academic background, and/or experience of the student?
  • How might concepts or theories that ground your discipline be tested during this field experience? How might research methods or creative techniques be employed?
  • How might the student's tasks provide insight about important concepts, theories, problems, etc. in your academic discipline?
  • How will her or his observations, interactions, etc., be recorded and organized to shed light on these theories, concepts, and/or problems?
  • How will you and the student gauge whether she or he is making progress toward achieving the objectives?

Revising the Proposal

The format of the online proposal allows you to comment on each of the student’s draft statements and ideas. It is especially important that you review and comment upon her or his proposed Learning Objectives, since these should make explicit the connections between disciplinary scholarship and practical experience. The clearer these connections are made up front, the crisper the lens through which the student can view, think about, and articulate what he or she is learning in the field.

“Not approving” a proposal does not mean you are rejecting it; it means that you are seeking clarification, better disciplinary grounding, or otherwise have questions that relate to how the student is framing the experience. As with any good proposal, several revisions might be needed to clarify, refine, or expand upon the connections a student is trying to make between the anticipated experience and his or her studies.

To indicate that revision is needed ...

  • click the "Approve Proposal/Request Revisions" button; then
  • select "Revisions are needed before your Proposal can be approved."
An email will be sent to the student indicating that you have questions about the draft or suggestions for revising sections of his or her proposal. S/he may then return to the proposal, view your comments, and revise the proposal accordingly.

Repeat this process until the Proposal is adequately grounded in your academic discipline and academic expectations are clear.

Indicate how you will evaluate the student’s performance

NB: There should be several assignments spaced throughout the course of the internship, rather than a single summary paper.

The majority of your evaluation should be based on academic assignments, not host site supervisor assessments (although you are free to take these into account).

Give final approval

Give final approval for the internship by signing the Approvals section (last page) of the proposal.

During the Internship ...

Your primary responsibility as internship instructor is to ask questions or otherwise provide regular feedback to keep the student-intern focused on understanding the experience through the lens of his or her academic studies.

Communicate regularly (weekly) with the student-intern throughout the semester.

Ongoing, focused communication is essential to

  • Ensure that the internship is progressing appropriately; and
  • Keep your student(s) focused on the connection between his or her studies and the current work experience.

Carefully review student and host supervisor evaluations as they are sent to you.

The student-intern and the host site supervisor will complete separate evaluations at three points during the internship. You will notified by e-mail when these are available for your review.

  • The preliminary evaluation is a short "heads up" about any issues or concerns that may warrant your immediate attention.
  • The midpoint evaluation is an important tool for assessing the quality of the experience and for determining how the internship might be improved.
    • Are you available for a face-to-face meeting with the host supervisor and your student to discuss the supervisor's evaluation as well as the internship more broadly? Please see "Midpoint Site Visit Guide."
    • The academic internship coordinator is available for midpoint site visits if scheduling these meetings is inconvenient.
  • The final evaluation assesses the experience from the perspectives of student and host supervisor.

At the conclusion of the internship ...

  1. Evaluate student performance and assign a grade for the course.
  2. Meet with student to review the experience and "debrief."
  3. Encourage the student to create or revise his or her final presentation into a poster for the annual URCAF.