Times have changed. Students now seek internships on campus and off, and faculty must actively recruit student help over the summer.
This year 47 students are serving as interns to faculty and staff. Some work as gophers, sure, but most are deeply involved in project-based work. Students help faculty conduct experiments in laboratories; review literature; research topics on the Internet or in the library; and serve as office assistants in administrative departments.
A few students will work with the Dean of Students’ Office to put the pieces into place for Freshman Orientation. Admissions interns will give tours of campus to prospective students. Guys working for Campus Services are mowing grass, moving dirt, and helping get the campus ready for the start of the year.
Generally speaking, most people agree that no matter what the work, active collaboration with a faculty or staff member is a good experience for a college student. But where’s the data to support the claim?
Charlie Blaich and Scott Feller are trying to prove that student-faculty collaboration is a good and beneficial thing.
Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation and working with the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, Blaich and Feller have students studying the pros and cons of summer internships, specifically research-based tracts.
"Charlie and I attended a round table discussion at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research on the future of undergraduate research," says Feller, who is an assistant professor of chemistry. "At this meeting it was clear that quantitative studies of the impact of undergraduate research do not exist and that support from granting agencies and college administrations would be much easier to obtain if there was some demonstration of the benefits of student-faculty collaboration."
The NSF agreed and has given the duo a grant to hire and train summer interns to study the entire collaborative process.
Blaich and Feller’s interns have interviewed their fellow students, will give pre- and post-internship tests, and are monitoring their experiences. The next step is to interview the faculty and staff who supervise the interns to identify the various levels of collaboration and responsibility each intern enjoys.
Blaich and Feller hope to answer a couple of questions through this research. The first is whether or not collaborating with faculty on research changes the students’ academic expectations. Second, are there particular ways of structuring internships that are more beneficial for students?
Obviously, Wabash hopes to develop is a blue print for the future. Blaich and Feller hope the inquiring interns will discover a range of activities and interactions that are truly beneficial and educational for future interns. Once those qualities of a good internship have been identified, Wabash hopes to look for opportunities to weave them into all summer internships.
The ways in which college students spend their summers have indeed changed since I used to mow lawns and do landscaping years ago. What’s happening at Wabash this summer will undoubtedly play an integral role in shaping and focusing future summer internship programs.
Jim Amidon is director of public affairs at Wabash College.