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Internships

Guide To Internships

Version 2021.1

Description
Benefits
Effective Practices
Assessments
Resources
Evidence

Internships are experiential learning opportunities in which a student works with a mentor in a company, national lab, or other non-academic employer for a fixed period of time. This section discusses how to effectively set up, run, and promote internship programs through your department and/or in partnership with other departments and offices at your institution or nearby institutions; how to develop relationships with

; and how to support students in internships. The guidance in this section may also apply to co-op programs. The terms “internship” and “co-op” may be used interchangeably, or may be distinguished in ways that are particular to your institutional context. Internships are typically part-time and/or short-term (less than three months) experiences that can be completed during the summer or while students are taking classes. Co-ops are typically full-time and longer-term (3–12 months) experiences that students engage in instead of classes. Internships may be optional extracurricular activities or an integrated part of a physics program’s curriculum. For guidance on other experiences that may be similar to or related to internships, see the sections on Capstone Experiences and Undergraduate Research.

Benefits

Student internships have been identified as a high-impact practice that can be a powerful tool for recruiting and retention, particularly for students from

. Internship programs can help departments meet

. Internships support career preparation by providing opportunities for students to learn technical and professional skills relevant to careers in industry, exposing students to a variety of career options, types of organizations, supervisory styles, and relationships with co-workers. Such experiences empower students to explore the kinds of careers that might fit their interests and abilities and the kinds of organizations they might like to work for. Paid internships provide opportunities for students to earn money to pay for college and/or reduce student loan debt, and to have work they do to pay for college contribute to their education. Internships help students build a network of professional contacts and are an effective way for undergraduates to get a job in industry immediately after graduation. Internship programs can also lead to relationships with

that can benefit the department.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action

Where are you and what are you trying to accomplish?

Who should be involved?

What will you do?

How did it go and what comes next?

To be intentional about change, a department must have a clear understanding of its present situation and a vision for what it would like to become. Our cycle of self-reflection questions will help your department start conversations and structure thinking about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action will help you put the EP3 Guide to work for your department.

Learn more about the Cycle of Reflection and Action and how it can help your department.

Effective Practices

Assess the local landscape with respect to internships and gather resources
1. Learn about current and past departmental internship programs’ structures, successes, failures, leaders, and points of contacts; use what you learn to guide future opportunities.
  Identify champions on campus or within the department who will lead and/or coordinate your internship program and maintain departmental internships and relationships with
  , campus career services or internship offices, and departments with whom you share internships.
  Learn what offices (e.g., campus career services or internship office), services (e.g., support for students searching for internships or institutional technology used to support internships, such as Handshake), and other programs on your campus are already dedicated to internships that could be relevant for physics students. Foster partnerships with relevant offices to assist with identifying and building connections with
  . Maintain these partnerships with periodic check-ins.
  Identify other departments (e.g., engineering, chemistry, and/or math) or nearby institutions that have internship programs from which you can learn and that may be potential partners for finding internships for students.
  Identify whether there are regional internship consortiums that your department can join and whether anyone in your department or campus career services office already has a membership.
  Work with other groups on campus to determine which employers currently have an internship relationship with your institution.
  Assess the capacity of existing and new internship opportunities to accommodate students with the skills that physics students possess.
  Assess your department’s and institution’s capacity to manage your internship program. For example, determine whether personnel are available to help place students and initiate and maintain relationships and agreements with
  .
  Become familiar with campus policies, procedures, and relevant legal and administrative requirements related to internships. For instance, learn about policies on how to share job postings with students and “place” or “match” students with internships in ways that ensure equity and compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity laws, and the role of minimum wage requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in unpaid internships.
2. Gather data on the career goals of your current students and the career paths of your alumni, including job types and industry sectors in which they have been employed. Assess how an internship program could support these career goals and paths, recognizing that if you want to recruit students who have not been served by your program in the past, you may need to focus on career paths beyond those pursued by your alumni to date. See the section on Career Preparation for details.
  If appropriate, gather data on where your students and alumni have completed internships they found on their own, their experiences in those positions, and how often those internships led to full-time hires after graduation.
  After providing students with information about the benefits of internships (see 4 below), assess their interest in internship opportunities, through, e.g., surveying current students about their interest in or understanding of the value of internships, and asking prospective students and their families whether an internship program would make them more likely to enroll in the physics program. See Programmatic Assessments below.
  Determine which
  an internship program can help fulfill.
3. Create and maintain a list of local companies, national labs, government agencies, and non-profit organizations that employ interns. Connect with your campus career services, internship, and/or alumni relations offices and learn about information and connections they already have that may help you in this effort.
  Cultivate and promote internship opportunities in a wide variety of career sectors in order to expose students to career paths they may not be aware of or that may not be common for your institution’s alumni.
  Identify the point(s) of contact for each potential
  (e.g., their human resources office or alumni who work there) and determine available opportunities and information about the application process. Commit to updating this information regularly, as it often changes from year to year.
  Attend trade shows and job fairs to meet with company representatives and build relationships through which internship opportunities can be developed.
  Meet with local and regional economic development organizations (such as Economic Development Corporations (EDCs), Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) panels,
  - or
  -owned business organizations, regional industry panels and working groups, Rotary chapters, and Chambers of Commerce) to identify and communicate with regional industries and businesses that could provide internship opportunities.
  Use focus groups or interviews with potential
  to identify what skills and knowledge they expect starting interns to possess, in order to determine which of your students might be a good fit for their internships and/or to ensure that you are providing students with the skills they need to be successful in internships.
  Work with
  to develop expected outcomes for interns and any deliverables, in order to ensure that interns and the internship partner share clear mutual expectations.
  Reach out to interest- or identity-related groups (e.g., national or campus organizations for women,
  ,
  , or
  people in various professions and/or
  within companies) to assist with recruiting and supporting interns from
  .
  Research and assess each potential
  's ability to recruit, support, and retain interns from
  , possibly in partnership with your office of equity and inclusion or with an external consultant with expertise in equity.
4. Build a database of graduates and their current and past employers to use for internship contacts, possibly in partnership with your campus alumni office.
  Partner with your alumni and colleagues to find and connect with potential
  through their professional networks.
Design and implement an internship program
1. Consider whether an extracurricular internship program, which connects students with opportunities and supports them in optional internships, or a curricular program, in which internships or co-ops are an integrated part of the curriculum and perhaps required for degree completion, better serves your students’ needs and fits your local institutional context.
  Consider which options for timing and duration of internships or co-ops best serve your students’ needs and fit your institutional context. For example, students might participate in internships or co-ops during the summer, part-time during the school year while taking classes, or full-time during the school year instead of classes for a more experiential learning experience. Increase the value of a full-time internship performed earlier in a student’s academic career by finding opportunities for students to continue working for their employer part-time after they return to campus.
  Consider requiring all majors to participate in an internship or co-op, in order to ensure that all students take advantage of this learning opportunity. Take care to ensure that the requirements for internships are not too onerous for students with other commitments, e.g., work, family, and/or a second major.
2. Establish desired outcomes for students participating in internships (e.g., development of technical, interpersonal, teamwork, critical-thinking, problem-solving, design, communication, and job search skills; post-graduation employment) that are aligned with your department’s mission.
  Develop explicit strategies for recruiting students from
  into internships and supporting them. Recognize that a
  approach is insufficient to ensure that these students can participate and have positive experiences in internships. See the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for details.
  Identify the elements your internship program will need, e.g., recruiting and maintaining relationships with
  , recruiting and tracking students, managing the application process, guiding students toward appropriate internship opportunities, integrating internships into the student learning experience, and coordinating program operations.
  Identify parties or offices responsible for each element of the program, including a member of the department responsible for overall coordination of internship activities.
  Document roles, responsibilities, and procedures relevant to the program. Include the student’s role in the internship search process, so that students can be held accountable for their own efforts and to help students develop important job search skills.
  Ensure that you understand the unique needs of students who are not US citizens with respect to work authorization for internships, that you are aware of institutional resources to support these students, and that you educate
  about requirements for interns on student visas.
  Consider establishing an internship advisory board consisting of faculty, students (especially former interns), alumni, and industry representatives to advise on desired student outcomes (see 2.B.i), the scope of the program, student preparation for internships, how internships are integrated into your curriculum,
  recruiting and relations, and assessment of your internship program.
3. Make a list of competencies your physics students can offer employers, such as problem-solving, analytical, mathematical, computational, laboratory, and technical skills. See pages 19–21 in the Phys21 report.
  Consider the needs of
  for particular skills (e.g., laboratory or computing skills) and undergraduate class standing when guiding students toward potential internships.
  Research and identify diverse types of jobs in which physics can be applied, even when job descriptions don’t mention physics. Examples include programming, working in a lab, quality control, program management, data analysis, process control, and engineering.
  Recognize that position descriptions often don’t explicitly mention physics and that internship office staff,
  human resources staff, and recruiters often don’t know what physics students can contribute. You will therefore need to help others see the connections between internship partner needs and your students’ skills.
4. Contact internship program leaders from other departments (particularly in the physical sciences, math, and your engineering school, if present) and nearby educational institutions, to learn effective practices for your local context, with respect to, e.g., program structure.
  Consider partnering with other internship programs on internship development and sharing of resources such as program staff and local contacts.
5. Work with
  to match internship opportunities to different levels of student skills and interests, so that more students can participate and have more productive experiences. Recognize that the success of each student internship impacts both the student’s future success and the willingness of employers to take future interns from your program.
  Work with
  to ensure that the timing of their internships aligns with your academic calendar, e.g., that summer opportunities fall between academic terms, and that six-month co-op opportunities require students to take a leave for only one term.
  Encourage
  to ensure that their interns’ supervisors receive training on, e.g., effective mentoring of students, inclusive practices, cross-cultural mentoring, ethics, power dynamics, disability awareness, conflict resolution, and avoiding discrimination and harassment.
  Track intern compensation over time to help you set realistic expectations with students and work toward ensuring equitable compensation.
  Encourage
  to make internship position descriptions more equitable by, e.g., replacing rigid language such as “must have the following skills” and “previous experience required” with words such as “interest in” and “exposure to” and highlighting whether it is possible for a student to gain a particular necessary skill (e.g., “Python needed by the start of the internship”), for instance through on-campus opportunities (see 3.A.vii).
Support the internship experience
1. Partner with your student success center or campus career services to support students in developing job search skills and materials by, e.g., setting up mock interviews; arranging for students to get feedback on resumes and interviews from career services staff,
  , and/or peers; teaching students to create a LinkedIn profile; teaching students to create digital and book-form portfolios or digital transcripts; teaching students how to research employers in advance of career fairs or interviews; and loaning students appropriate business attire to attend career fairs or interviews.
  Connect students to off-campus career resources, such as those from
  and
  . See Resources in the section on Career Preparation.
  Encourage students to inventory their skills and knowledge, empower them to recognize the variety of positions in which they can contribute and apply their skills (e.g., see 2.C.iii. above), and support them in marketing their skills effectively to potential employers.
  Support student visits to local and regional internship sites such as national labs and major employers, perhaps as part of
  or other student group activities.
  Encourage students to reach out to recruiters, even those who are not recruiting for physics majors, since recruiters may be aware of employers’ broader needs and pass students’ information on.
  Encourage students to search for internship opportunities on company or
  websites.
  Encourage students to participate in campus internship, career, or job fairs or employer information sessions organized by career services, e.g., by making participation an assignment in a seminar course or by offering extra credit. Explain to students that these are good opportunities to learn about and network with employers, even if an event does not seem to have a direct tie to the type of role they are looking for.
  Incorporate training for common skills employers seek (e.g., Python programming, Matlab, CAD, and lab equipment operation) into your curriculum, through, e.g., short courses, “boot camps,” or integration into lab courses.
  Provide career advising, in conjunction with academic advising, that includes and respects a wide range of non-academic career paths. See the section on Career Preparation for guidance on how to communicate to and educate students about a variety of career options.
  Support students in considering the ethical practices of particular employers and industries (e.g., how their work is used and how they treat their employees) when selecting internships. Educate students on the ways they can research employers’ dedication to values that students care about (e.g., equity and inclusion, sustainability) as part of the job search process, e.g., through the company website or Glassdoor.
2. Ensure that interns receive written expectations for, e.g., work hours, academic credit, compensation, supervision, scope of work, and deliverables. These may be established by the
  and/or your
  .
  Encourage interns to meet periodically with their supervisor at the
  to discuss their performance and obtain feedback.
  Have interns meet periodically with your
  , so the coordinator can monitor interns’ performance, expectations, and learning, and address issues and challenges.
  Encourage your
  to meet periodically with internship supervisors to discuss intern performance and provide feedback to both interns and supervisors.
  Ensure that interns are aware of protocols, reporting mechanisms, and contact names at both their employer and your institution for any employment issues that arise, including incidents of harassment.
  Ensure that interns are aware of
  resources such as human resources and interest- or identity-related groups (e.g.,
  for employees who are women,
  ,
  , or
  ), and make those groups aware of current interns.
  Encourage interns to write recommendations for co-workers and fellow interns on LinkedIn, recognizing that writing positively about one’s working relationships early in one’s careers shows important communication skills to future employers and graduate programs. Also teach interns how to politely decline when they are not comfortable writing positive recommendations for co-workers.
3. Ensure that internship mentoring activities are supported and positively recognized in evaluations for, e.g., reappointment, tenure, promotion, and merit.
  Support consulting or sabbaticals for faculty to build relationships with industries, companies, and national labs that are potential candidates to host interns.
  Educate faculty on laws and institutional policies for recruiting and student referrals to internship opportunities. For example, ensure that faculty are aware that the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and
  prohibit them from complying with requests from employers to refer a few of their best students.
  Invite faculty to attend on-campus recruiting events, career fairs, or expos, to learn what skills employers want and to build or expand relationships with recruiters from potential
  . Consult with campus career services to determine which events are appropriate and productive for faculty to attend.
  Identify and counteract any negative messaging students may be receiving from members of your department regarding their choice to pursue internships, e.g., that they will “fall behind” or that they aren’t a “serious student” if they choose an internship over an academic research project.
4. Use the Programmatic Assessments below to assess the effectiveness of your internship program, integrating your assessment into your department’s annual assessment process.
  Use assessment results to evaluate, revise, and improve your internship program.
  Ensure that your internship program is meeting the student outcomes that have been established for it (see 1.B, 2.B.i, and 2.C above).
  Ensure that your internship program is providing value to student interns, through, e.g., providing appropriate technical and professional skills, increasing post-graduation employment opportunities, reaffirming interest in or redirecting interest toward a particular career path, and/or advancing students toward their goals and aspirations.
  Ensure that your internship program is providing value to
  by, e.g., providing interns who perform valuable work, creating and training a pool of potential future employees, and providing opportunities for internship partners to give back to the community.
  Maintain a clear connection between your internship program and the rest of your physics program. For example, provide pathways for internships to develop skills linked to your student outcomes that are not easily attainable through traditional coursework, and use the assessment of your internship program to identify and fill gaps in your curriculum that are preventing students from obtaining or succeeding in internships.
  Periodically review the efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability of internship program administrative structures, including staffing, student and
  marketing and recruiting, advising and mentoring of student interns, and placement and supervision of interns.
  Consider the value of your internship program to the department or institution. For example,
  might become partners in areas beyond internships, provide equipment donations or student scholarships, promote your program, and/or become members of departmental and institutional advisory boards.
Promote internships and their value to students
1. Highlight the value of internships (even unpaid internships) and the skills interns gain that help prepare them for careers and graduate school.
  Highlight the value of internships for developing relationships with an employer and with co-workers and mentors who can support students in their future careers and help them build contacts that could lead to future jobs at a wide range of employers, e.g., through referrals and connections on LinkedIn.
  Emphasize the value of an internship supervisor’s letter of recommendation for career advancement, graduate school, and scholarships. Encourage students to ask internship supervisors to write them a positive recommendation after their internship and post it to the student’s LinkedIn profile.
  Promote internships in appropriate courses and during department activities (e.g., introductory courses, department colloquia, a first-year seminar, or student club events). Emphasize internships’ value for developing technical and professional skills, opening doors toward permanent employment, and providing income from a professionally-relevant experience.
  Engage your campus career services office to help support your students in learning about internship opportunities and strategies for obtaining them.
  Make students aware of physics-specific resources focused on advertising internship opportunities (and see Resources below) that allow them to explore the types of experiences available.
  Invite a diverse group of current students who have already had internships to talk about their experiences, provide personal advice, and assist in recruiting, e.g., via participation in
  and/or physics-club events, colloquia, class visits, or career fairs.
  Encourage alumni to maintain contact with the department. Invite a diverse group of alumni to talk about their internships experiences, career paths, and current internship opportunities with their employers.
  Invite internship program directors and/or research and development directors from your
  to visit campus or give a virtual talk to educate students and faculty about their internship program and/or the type of work student interns might do.
  Incorporate internship and career advising into mentoring and academic advising.
2. Provide opportunities for students to present their internship experiences to the department and campus community in venues such as department colloquia or seminars, poster sessions, undergraduate research symposia, and undergraduate research journals.
  Support presentations of interns and internship outcomes at venues such as
  ,
  ,
  ,
  , and
  regional and national meetings, and publicize those presentations in your department.
  Provide venues (e.g., social media, blogs, and/or email lists) for previous interns to communicate with potential applicants about the programs they participated in.
  Highlight recent student internship experiences in department displays, postings, recruiting brochures, and newsletters.
  Use your departmental website to promote your internship program to current and potential students and their families, and to potential
  .
  Use your public affairs office, alumni magazine, or other institutional communication outlets to publicize high-profile student internship accomplishments and your internship program.
Integrate internships into the student experience
1. Publicize and educate all students on the benefits of, and application processes for, internships, recognizing that many students (particularly first-generation students) may be unaware of what an internship is, what they can gain from an internship, and how to apply for an internship.
  Recognize that, depending on their backgrounds and whether they have seen people like them in similar roles, students may not feel equally welcome in internships, and that some may need individual encouragement to participate. Educate advisors, mentors,
  , and students on the
  and
  , in order to mitigate its effects on whether a student pursues or is encouraged to pursue an internship.
  Provide and promote paid internship opportunities, recognizing that unpaid positions are often inaccessible to students who must work to pay for college. Consider ways to provide financial support for students who cannot afford to take unpaid internships, e.g., through donations from alumni or others, grants, funding from the dean’s office, or other direct institutional support.
  Address
  to ensure that recruiting of students into internships is fair and equitable, especially if your department does not require all majors to participate in internships. Systematically track which students are participating in internships, and look for and address sources of inequity. See the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for details.
2. Consider introducing credit-bearing courses corresponding to internship experiences into your curriculum.
  Allow students to substitute an internship for an elective, study abroad opportunity, service learning, or a physics special topics course.
  Confer a certificate, display a poster, or provide other recognition for students who satisfactorily complete an internship.
  Consider having students write draft internship applications and review each other’s applications as part of their second- or third-year course work, in, e.g., a follow-up to a junior lab project, an honors program requirement, or an assignment in a professional development or writing seminar.
  If internships are not integrated into your major, make your major requirements flexible enough to allow students to do full-time co-ops that require a term away from classes.
3. Learn about students’ experiences in internships by incorporating post-internship activities that encourage students to reflect on what they have learned, e.g., presentations, portfolios, or written summaries.
  Measure student outcomes from internships, such as skills developed (using assessment instruments such as pre- and post-internship professional development skill surveys, post-internship employer and student evaluations, interviews, or focus groups) and post-graduation employment.
  Assess how well student outcomes are aligned with your program objectives (see 1.B, 2.B.i, and 2.B).
  Use what you learn about student outcomes to improve your internship program.

Programmatic Assessments

Identify which of the above Effective Practices you are implementing and track the results of implementing them.
Partner with your campus career services or internship office and staff to conduct an inventory of the effectiveness of internship program operations and what areas could be improved.
Conduct an inventory of how your internship program contributes to the attainment of
. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to conduct inventories.
Conduct an inventory of internship providers and employers in your region, their industry sector, and what types of internships they provide. Determine how these opportunities connect to student interests and evaluate how effectively your department is partnering with these potential partners.
Identify and evaluate departmental and institutional policies pertaining to students participating in internships and how students receive credit for them.
Identify the resources that the department and institution provide for students to learn about and secure internships, and evaluate whether these resources are sufficient.
Conduct perception surveys of both students and faculty to understand how they value internships and what they think about your internship program. Do student and faculty perceptions align with each other and with those of the institution? See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to use student feedback forms for formative assessment and how to use surveys, interviews, and focus groups to learn about your students.
Use exit interviews, surveys, and/or focus groups to ask students who participated in internships how successful the operational elements of the program were (e.g., the application process, pay, onboarding, training, accommodations, job activities, working environment, relationship with company mentor, support from
) and what areas could be improved.
Analyze the demographics and interests of your majors, likely in partnership with your office of institutional research. Correlate demographics with survey responses to determine how well your program is serving the internship needs of all students. For guidance on how to collect and analyze demographic data respectfully and protect anonymity, see the Guidelines for Demographic Questions in the supplement on How to Design Surveys, Interviews, and Focus Groups.
Use conversations, surveys, and interviews to determine whether your internship program is meeting company expectations. Ask about (1) the experience of both the intern and the company, (2) the best aspects of the program, and (3) suggested areas of improvement.
Use conversations and surveys to determine whether each partner was satisfied with their intern(s), if they would consider bringing back the same intern for another internship or hiring them, and potential areas for improvement. Evaluate the skills, knowledge, and attitudes students gain using rubrics such as the Kettering University Employer Work Evaluation, provided on page 23 of the Phys21 supplement.
Survey each intern’s direct mentor to assess their intern’s attainment of company goals for your internship program (e.g., was the intern successful in their job, and would they consider the intern as a potential new hire) and potential areas for improvement.
Develop a mechanism for tracking the number of students who are interested in and participate in internship programs, and what types of internships (e.g., job types and industry sector) they participate in. Track how student interest and participation changes over time. Include demographics and other information to assess whether participation in internships is equitable.
Track how many
are available for internships, how many interns they take, and how these numbers change over time.
Determine how many internships lead to full-time hires after graduation by each
.
Evaluate student achievement of
for internships using supervisor and employer feedback, department rubrics for products of internships, etc.
Have students complete self-assessments of their learning and development as a physics major at milestones throughout the degree program. Compare their self-assessments before and after participating in internships.
Use exit interviews, surveys, and/or focus groups to ask students how internships have impacted their satisfaction with the major, whether their internship(s) met their expectations, what the best aspects of the experience(s) were, and what skills and knowledge they gained.
Use enrollment data, focus groups, and student exit surveys to track how your internship program impacts student recruiting and retention in your program.
Use focus groups, exit surveys, alumni surveys, employer placement data, and long-term tracking of alumni employment to assess if and how your internship program affected students’ post-graduation employment opportunities and career choices, and how well the internships they participated in prepared them for their careers. If relevant, identify the impact of your internship program on your institution’s career outcomes data.

Resources

See Resources in the section on Career Preparation for resources about the knowledge and skills in which non-academic employers are interested, the wide range of relevant skills that physics students acquire, and the broad range of employment opportunities (including common job titles, most of which do not specifically include the word “physicist”) available for students with a background in physics.

Listings of physics-related internship programs: