The purpose of this internship is for students to apply and extend their academic and field training in a real-world, professional setting. This internship experience involves not only the actual experience, but reflecting on and learning from the experience through related assignments. This is a final, capstone experience, similar to a student-teaching experience for those preparing to become classroom teachers. Internships are 6-12 credits, depending on your academic program and catalog year, and carry an equivalent workload of 40 hours/week per academic credit. Internships should be completed within a single semester. If you are an EOE major your internship will typically be the summer after your last semester of the program, or the summer preceding your last semester or year (generally summer after senior year, but could be after your junior year). CNS internships should be toward the end of your degree (during the final year, and in any term; please consult with your advisor).
The quality of your internship is essential; thus it is important that you and your advisor carefully select a site that will provide a good learning experience, quality mentoring, and a match between what you hope to learn from your internship. Do not commit to an agency or organization until you have met with your advisor!
Think about your strengths, areas you'd like to improve, career goals, and the type of position or organization you see yourself working in the future. Develop objectives for what you'd like to gain through your internship experience.
Using electronic lists of internships, web search engines, and networking with your peers, supervisors, and instructors, develop a list of 5 or 6 potential sites.
Meet with your advisor to discuss your objectives, strengths/areas to improve, and career goals. Share your potential sites with your advisor. Be prepared to share how you think the sites you've selected could help you achieve your objectives or goals for your internship. Ideally this happens one year prior to your internship.
Attend a pre-internship meeting the semester before you plan to complete your internship.
Apply to the site that you and your advisor have agreed upon as the best fit for your internship experience. While many organizations and agencies may have a specific application process (and even a competitive one), others will not. In your initial inquiry, make sure the organization or agency to which you plan to apply understands the requirements for your internship (see the information from the Professional Expectations section). In some cases, it may be helpful for your advisor to contact your potential internship site to make sure they understand our program's expectations for the internship. You may want to apply for more than one internship, depending on the competitiveness of your site's internship program. Your application should be submitted to your site early in the term of the term (semester) prior to your internship semester (or sooner!). Keep in mind that many sites will have their own internship deadlines!
Once you are accepted at your site (after successfully applying for your internship), and after your advisor has confirmed that the site will offer the type of educational experience needed for the internship requirements, you will provide your advisor with your site's address, supervior's name and email and phone, and internship dates. Your advisor will work with your site to complete the Agreement of Affiliation, which defines the agreement between the University and your internship site. This agreement must be in place one month before the end of the term that precedes your internship term. The agreement needs to be in place before you will be added to the permission list to register.
Once the Affiliation Agreement is completed, you will be given a permission number to register for your internship. You need to register for all credits for the term that you are actually doing your internship, under the intership section of your advisor. If you internship will be located farther than 75 miles from Duluth, complete a UMD Request for Waiver of Student Service Fee. Registration prompts a UMD background check, which is required even if your site requires their own background check. You will receive correspondence from the company that carries out the background check; please be sure to respond within the 5 day window, otherwise the process has to be repeated, which will delay the start of your internship.
For each credit, approximately 40 hours/week. An 8-credit internship would be 8 x 40 or 320 hours.
A learning experience that supports your classroom learning at UMD: This internship supports our program goal of professional development of outdoor and environmental educators. Ideally you will have a chance to learn to teach about or interpret a new ecosystem and to work with new audiences, topics, teaching methods, professional capacities.
Mentoring from your site supervisor: While you will have much to contribute to your site, based on your coursework and previous work and personal experiences, the goal is for you to learn from your site. Thus, it is expected that your site supervisor guides you and challenges you, helping your learn from the site through guided experience, rather than "turning you loose" to work completely on your own.
Professional conduct: When you are working at your internship site, you are representing our EOE major and UMD. Their impressions of our program will be shaped by their impressions of you! You are expected to exhibit a strong work ethic, putting at least 100% effort into your internship. Challenge yourself to be a self-reflective learner, thinking about how you can apply what you've learned through the program to your internship. You are expected to communicate professionally, using appropriate and correct forms of oral and written communication, and to dress professionally and appropriately. You are also expected to carry out your internship responsibilities with respect for the rights, dignity, safety, and well-being of peers, instructors, participants, and others with who you come in contact. It is also expected that you model environmentally-responsible/low-impact behaviors, and that you distinguish between being an outdoor educator and being an environmental advocate. As an educator, you can help participants develop the knowledge and skills to act responsibly regarding the environment, but ultimately it is up to participants to make their own decisions regarding what to think or do.
Email Updates: Email once per month an update to your advisor, copying your supervisor with the following information: Date; Summary of Responsibilities/Activities; What you are learning and/or what is going well, as well as any areas you'd like to note that are not going as well or areas you want to learn more about. This should be emailed to the advisory, copying the internship site supervisor. Please note that if there are any concerns that you need assistance with, particularly immediate concerns, please don't wait for the email report - contact your advisor when and as needed!
Two lesson plans or programs: These should be lesson plans or programs that you have developed for or that you have taught at your site. These should be uploaded to a google folder that you share with your advisor.
Project: This involves a systematic process of observing or investigating a topic, or carrying out a project. Your topic should be something in which you are interested and something related to your site. You can select a topic relating to the natural or cultural history of your site, an environmental-related issue, or some aspect of programming development, implementation or evaluation. This project could also be a curriculum project or a training handbook, for example. The project is something that you can learn from while contributing to your site (something they would find relevant and useful). Your topic must be approved by your advisor by the end of week 2; the final project is due by the end of week 15, as a part of your portfolio. The final project should be uploaded to a google folder that you share with your advisor.
Synthesis paper: This is a 3-4 page reflection of your internship experience. Briefly describe what you did and then reflect on what you learned at your site. Also reflect on how your experience relates back to what you learned at UMD and how it relates to the "bigger picture" of our field and profession. This should be uploaded to your google internship folder that you share with your advisor.
Final evaluation from your site supervisor (no required format, but the evaluation should be written/typed and signed by your supervisor). This should be uploaded to your google internship folder that you share with your advisor.
Final meeting with your advisor. You will not receive a grade for your internship until you have met with your Advisor and your assignments are complete.
Internships are graded as pass/no-pass, upon advisor's review of your completed assignments (all of which must be included in the one google folder, shared with your advisor, with the exception of the email reports). If work is not completed by end of academic term, you will receive an Incomplete until work is complete. Per University policy on incompletes, incompletes lapse to an 'N' (no pass) one year after the last day of the term. With the permission of the instructor, the incomplete can be extended for one additional year even after it has lapsed to an 'N'.