Congratulations on becoming an ISC intern! There are a number of mandatory assignments you must complete for the internship. Students will not receive a grade for ISC 399 until they are completed.
Once you’re added to ISC 399, your faculty advisor will be notified of your internship and you’ll be given access to the appropriate Canvas course shell. You’re expected to email your faculty advisor during your first week of work at the internship to give them an overview of where you’re working and what you’ll be doing.
During the Fall and Spring semesters, you’ll work with your assigned ISC faculty advisor. During the Winter and Summer sessions, Elizabeth Spencer is the advisor for all ISC 399 interns.
Once a week, you will upload into Canvas a summary of your activities for the week and what you learned.
The weekly report should include the name of the place where you are interning, the number of hours worked that week and the total hours worked to date. That information should be followed by a paragraph summarizing what you did that week.
You’ll need to keep daily notes of what you do so you’ll be able to discuss your activities in detail with your faculty advisor as the semester progresses. The faculty advisor may ask to look at the daily notes to monitor your internship experience, but you should not submit your notes to your faculty advisor unless asked.
Halfway through the semester (after you’ve completed approximately 75 hours), you will prepare a detailed written report for your faculty advisor and upload it to Canvas. The mid-semester report will discuss the duties you’ve undertaken, what you feel you are learning from the activities and whether you’re making progress toward completing the goals outlined in the internship contract.
Copies of any work you have created should also be uploaded with the report.
If there are problems with the internship, you should note them so they can be corrected to make the second half of the internship more productive. This report should also include information about your impression of the working environment of the internship.
This report, which will be due before the end of the last week of classes, will summarize the activities you’ve undertaken during the internship with specific reference to what you did, what you learned, how the internship has affected your interest in a career in the field and what it was like to work with the internship site. This report will also be uploaded to Canvas.
Copies of any materials created since the mid-semester report should also be uploaded.
Your faculty advisor will request that the internship site supervisor complete an evaluation of your work. Interns should remind their supervisors to complete the form in a timely manner. No grade for the internship may be entered until the evaluation has been submitted by the supervisor.
You must write a thank you letter to your internship site supervisor. Its purpose is to convey your appreciation of the supervisor's role in your career preparation.
Express your appreciation for the opportunity. Speak specifically about skills and professional traits you gained and point to how these will help you in your career. If appropriate, include a comment or two on how your supervisor went above and beyond in furthering your professional readiness. In your close, if it's appropriate, indicate how you'll maintain future contact with your supervisor.
Use a standard business format for your letter. If you need a visual refresher on format, click here.
By now, you and you and your supervisor should know one another fairly well. So, even though the letter's format is fairly formal, you will likely want to use a conversational tone.
Upload a copy of the thank you letter into Canvas.
NOTE: While a hard copy letter is preferred, if your site supervisor has a preference for email, the letter may be emailed to them as an attachment rather than sent through the postal service.