260 Internships in the Liberal Arts & Sciences
Spring 2021 / 1 cr

This one-credit online course serves as an academic match for your internship experience.

Half of all college graduates report completing at least one internship during their time as students. This online course provides a way for students who have found exciting outside internships to earn academic credit in connection with their work experience. Students will analyze their professional training experiences in the high-tech workplace in the context of the goals of a liberal arts and sciences university education, by practicing critical reading, writing, and observation skills.

Level: Elementary
Requisites: None. Open to all UW-Madison students regardless of year or major.
Instruction mode: Online, asynchronous
Lecture: None
Discussion: None
Credits: One credit. Credit hour requirements met by the equivalent of three hours of expected academic work each week over a fall/spring semester of 15 weeks, or five hours of academic work each week over a summer term of 8 weeks.
Repeatable: Students may repeat the course up to three times; however, in most cases students should repeat the course only if they are participating in a different internship and/or taking on a different position each time.

Please note: To be authorized to take this course, students must first apply through SuccessWorks at https://successworks.wisc.edu/ls-finding-an-internship/inter-ls-260-internship-course/

Professor
Greg Downey
gdowney@wisc.edu
Office hours by appointment.

Teaching Assistant
(no teaching assistant for Spring 2021)

Career Education Coordinator
Molly Green
mmgreen5@wisc.edu
SuccessWorks

Career Advising
For L&S Students: Visit SuccessWorks
(third floor above the University Bookstore)
to find hours for drop-in and scheduled career advising.

Not an L&S Student? Find your career office here.

How does this course work?
Special considerations during COVID-19 pandemic

This course is intended to be matched with an outside internship. While we encourage students to seek and arrange internships that can be completed through online social distancing, this course will also support students with in-person internships, when those arrangements comport with the policies of the states, localities, and organizations where those internships take place. We expect all students to comply with social distancing guidelines placed by state governments, local authorities, and placement organizations, and we advise all students to work with their internship supervisors to create back-up plans in case those social distancing guidelines change. See more COVID-19 information here.

You will set up a text Discussion board here on Canvas where you will write "field notes" about your internship each week over the course of the term (field notes always due by Saturday at midnight).
Your field notes will also incorporate reactions to occasional assigned scholarly readings and current news articles from a news source that you choose which is related to your internship.
Each week you will also comment on at least two other students' field notes, to gain insight into other internship experiences (comments always due by Sunday at midnight).
At the midpoint of the term, you'll check in with a SuccessWorks career adviser about how your internship is going, and you'll update your resume so we can offer feedback.
At the end of the term, you'll write up a final reflective summary of your experience.

Learning outcomes

Reflect on how your outside internship connects to your liberal arts and sciences education through writing, reading, peer interaction, and guidance from instructors and advisors.

Syllabus on one page

(Click on the image to download this syllabus as a one-page PDF)

Grading

No matter how many hours you are working at your field site, your grade is based only on your academic work. While working as interns at your individual organizations, you will come together with your peers online each week to do several things:

Read both scholarly articles and current news articles -- some that we assign, some that you find yourself through a news source that you select which relates to your internship area.
Write and post organized field notes to our class discussion, where you describe and reflect on your internship work and training experiences, based on a guiding prompt from us each week, and relating your experiences to your readings for the week. About a page or two of writing per week.
Read and comment on other students' field notes in order to create an online discussion community about everyone's internship experiences. About a half page of writing per week.
Practice key career development skills like communicating with your colleagues about a news article, checking in with a career adviser, and updating your resume and LinkedIn site with your internship experiences.

Those weekly activities are worth 80% of your final grade.

There is also a final reflection project due at the end of the course:

Create a summative final reflection relating your field notes, your article and news reflections and your conversation with other students to the broader themes of the course. About three or four pages of writing.

That final reflection project is worth 20% of your final grade.

All grades will be entered in Canvas as the term progresses so you can see how you are doing, and so the instructor can leave confidential comments to you on your progress.

Grading rubric for weekly field notes and student comments. Your weekly written reflective work is graded on an 8-point scale, according to this general rubric:

7-8 points: Thorough, detailed, interesting reflections that engage thoughtfully with the weekly theme. Clear evidence that student read and engaged with that week's scholarly articles. Clear evidence that student read and engaged the news source they are following. Helpful and interesting comments on other students' work. Writing is readable and clear with minimal errors.

5-6 points: Less thorough and detailed reflections that don't directly respond to the week's theme. Superficial engagement with the week's scholarly articles or news items. Minimal or superficial comments on other students' work. Writing is still readable but often unclear with several errors.

4 points and below: Vague, incomplete, or otherwise problematic reflections. No evident engagement with the week's scholarly reading or news source. Missing comments on other students' work. Writing has substantial errors or is unreadable.

0 points: No work completed.

Final semester grading scale. Semester grades are computed out of 100 possible points on the standard A-F scale:

93-100 = A
88-92 = AB
83-87 = B
78-82 = BC
73-77 = C
63-72 = D
0-62 = F

Important notes on grading:

Students must complete all assignments in order to pass this course, regardless of grades received on individual assignments.
Internship site supervisors cannot grade students; nor can students count work performed at an internship site for college credit. All UW internship courses must be supervised by a faculty member and graded only on academic work completed in parallel with on-site internship work.
If for any reason you find that you cannot complete your internship, you must inform the course instructor immediately. Depending on timing and circumstances, there may be a way to withdraw from the course or complete the work of the course based on a partial internship experience.
If you are repeating the course with the same internship organization, your fieldnotes, article responses, and final reflection must all be significantly different than the work you turned in when taking the course before. We expect that you will build on your earlier experiences, not simply repeat them, so we need to see clear progress in the content and detail of your reflections.

Textbook

Our textbook for this class is a 200-page custom student guide on career development that you may download free of charge on this website:

Greg Downey, Working Toward Success: Building a Career in the Liberal Arts and Sciences (2019)

We also suggest one recommended but optional textbook which is available at the University Bookstore and also at online retailers (about $20):

Katharine Brooks, You Majored in What? Designing Your Path from College to Career (2017) (Links to an external site.). This book is a comprehensive guide to the job search process, written by an expert in career advising and targeted to liberal arts and sciences university students. It should remain useful to you throughout your time at UW-Madison and beyond.

About internships

What is an Internship?

A short-term, real-world work experience that integrates knowledge from the classroom with practical application and skill development. An internship can occur during the academic year, a semester or summer, or after graduation.
A mutually-beneficial relationship between both you and your employer. You receive real-world training and mentorship, and your employer builds a relationship with a potential future hire.
A chance to work side-by-side with someone in your potential career. An internship always involves a personal, ongoing relationship with at least one supervisor, manager, or professional at the organization.
A diversity of organizational types and employment relations. Internships can be paid or unpaid; they can demand full-time or part-time work; and they can involve a for-profit, non-profit, or governmental organization. Many organizations now require interns to be enrolled in a credit-bearing college course in order to be eligible for their internship.

What are some examples of work that would be called an internship?

A paid corporate internship. You have been hired to work for minimum wage in a company's official summer intern program. They have a formal application process and orientation process for all of the interns they hire each year, from all over the US.
An unpaid corporate internship. You have been approved to work as an unpaid reporter for a news organization for a three-month period, supervised by a professional journalist, in which your goal is to write a piece of your own and have it published by the end of the contract period.
A public service internship. You have been accepted to a competitive (but unpaid) state government program for college students to work as volunteer aides to legislators throughout the fall school term.
A community service internship. You arrange, on your own, a deal with a local community organization to volunteer with them on a regular, weekly basis at their location, doing a variety of tasks that both benefit the organization and introduce you to a particular kind of career in the non-profit sector -- and you have a designated professional at the organization who you report to.

What are some examples of work that would not be called an internship?

Anonymous volunteering. If you're just volunteering with an organization on an irregular basis, without any personal, ongoing relationship with the organization's staff or regular set of duties, you're not an intern, and cannot combine this experience with our internship course. (However, this kind of community work might connect well to a service-learning course.)
Independent projects. If you're working completely on your own, trying to put together a project that you hope will be of interest when you submit it to an outside organization after weeks of preparation, you're not an intern, and cannot combine this experience with our internship course. (However, this kind of independent work might connect well to a directed-study course.)
Regular employment. If you're working for an organization as a regular employee, full-time or part-time, simply as a way to gain a paycheck with no interest in exploring the meaning or value of the organization as a future career path, you're not an intern, and cannot combine this experience with our internship course.

What is the value of an Internship?

Develop marketable skills
Gain hands-on experience
Build confidence and self-esteem
Try out a career on a short term basis
Develop relationships with professional contacts for future networking
Be more employable since employers want to hire students who have had internship experience
Reflect on the value of your undergraduate education in order to make the most of your remaining time at UW-Madison

Helpful career resources

SuccessWorks at the College of Letters & ScienceLinks to an external site.
Other UW-Madison Career CentersLinks to an external site.
UW-Madison Student Job CenterLinks to an external site.
UW-Madison Career Fairs calendarLinks to an external site.
Handshake (Links to an external site.) - UW-Madison's job and internship board
Wisconsin Alumni Association – Badger Bridge (Links to an external site.)
Information About Internships (Links to an external site.) — National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) tips about internships.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics - Occupational Outlook Handbook (Links to an external site.)
USA Jobs (Links to an external site.), "the official job site of the US Federal Government"