Internship Practicum Instructor Responsibilities

1. Participate in Internship Faculty Development – To ensure internships, practicums and co-ops meet all required policies, rules and guidelines, and to support faculty in the development process, the Office of Experiential Learning offers a series of training and professional development programs. 

a. Internship Regulations and Processes – A 1-hour training module required by faculty scheduled to teach an internship, practicum or co-op. After completing the Internship Regulations and Processes training faculty gain designation as Certified Internship Instructors and gain one hour of professional development credit.

The module focuses on key and critical elements of offering, managing, tracking and reporting of these experiential learning offerings. The course is broken down into the following areas: 

Section 1 – Guidelines, Rules and Laws for Establishing an Internship
Section 2 – Effectively Managing Internship Courses
Section 3 – Processes and Procedures for Faculty, Student and Employer

b. OEL Internship Best Practices – This training is designed to help faculty learn about national standards and best practices, identify methods of collecting data and reviewing to compare data trends with a focus on disaggregated data, and review methods of implementation that help improve the student and employer experience. 

An online, self-paced, 3-weeks session composed of readings, videos and discussion board questions allows faculty to participate in a flexible format and interact with fellow peers. Faculty receive a $200 stipend and 10 faculty development hours upon completion. 

The course is broken down into the following areas: 

Week 1 – ACC Internship Best Practices
Week 2 – Managing Internship Resources
Week 3 – Data and Research surrounding Internships

2. Establish the Employer Relationship and Assign Internships – With the support of departments the OEL Internship Program develops and maintains a master list of potential internship employers. The master list is compiled by direct outreach to employers to discern their inclination of hiring ACC students as interns, and the types of positions they might consider. 

Before the start of each semester, the OEL contacts employers to:

(a) identify potential openings for ACC interns

(b) confirm adherence to NACE standard

(c) establish whether the positions are paid or unpaid

(d) obtain brief job descriptions.

The list of employers seeking interns during a given semester is called the active list. 

• • • Master List – A list of all potential employers open to hiring an ACC intern.  At a minimum, the master list includes the company or agency name and name, phone number, and email address of the hiring agent. Contacts are emailed one month prior to the start of each semester to develop the active lists for each department.

• • • Active List – A list of employers who have agreed to hire an intern in the upcoming semester. Active lists are only valid a single semester and will be updated prior to the beginning of each semester by the OEL Internship Program. 

All internship instructors will have a customized active list each semester. It is the responsibility of the internship practicum instructor to contact all employers on their active list to discuss the internships, clarify the learning objectives, confirm adherence to NACE standards, and establish a hiring process and timeline. 

As internship positions are filled, the internship practicum instructor should work with the OEL to update the active list. 

3. Gather Feedback through Evaluation – At the conclusion of the internship semester, the department chair and the internship practicum instructor will be asked to provide feedback through an evaluation. This feedback will be used to assess the internship experience and consider needs for improvement.  

 

Once your internship, practicum or co-op has been established and you have attended the trainings above, you are ready to teach the course, provide support to students and ensure all guidelines and regulations are being met.

Here is the step by step process to get started: 

1. Review Employer Active List – The Internship Coordinator will send a weekly email to department chairs and internship instructors. Employer Active List will be updated and maintained weekly in Google Docs. Faculty can reject or approve internship opportunities.
   
2. Contact Employers on Active List – Contact with students internship sites is considered a best practice and enables faculty to reach out to employers to ask specific questions or to make introductions prior to the beginning of the semester. Instructors can also wait until students have been placed in internship opportunities before establishing contact.

3. Meet with Students to Determine Goals and Plan Internships – Within the first week of the semester, schedule a time to meet with students and review the goals and requirements for completing a successful internship.  It is Important to maintain communication with students throughout their degree to plan ahead for internships.

4. Complete Internship Agreement *
   Deadline for submission is the end of the 6th week, Friday, of the semester.

   If a deadline can’t be made, the instructor must communicate this to OEL.

   If using the online agreement, the agreement is a 3 step submission process initiated by the student.

The Internship Agreement

The ACC Internship Agreement is a 3-step, online process initiated by the student.

https://austincc.force.com/learningbydoing/s

Students who are enrolled in a designated internship, practicum or coop course will log into the system with their ACCeID to initiate completion of the required forms and approvals for tracking and managing the process. 

All parties receive a digital copy of the completed agreement and OEL will maintain internship agreements available for department records.

If you have trouble accessing the internship agreement, please contact internships@austincc.edu for further assistance

5. Advertise / Match Students to Internship Opportunities – Faculty are responsible for advertising and assisting with matching students to internship opportunities. It is strongly encouraged and considered a best practice that faculty make contact with each employer on the Active List to discuss employer needs and possible matches. It is also expected that faculty know their students enough to make recommendations or encourage students to apply to specific internship opportunities. 

Faculty should not share the Active List, (google doc) with students as some of our employer partners do not want their contact information shared. It is recommended that a new document is created or personal information such as phone number or email is blocked out for those employers who do not want to be directly contacted. Department Chairs, the course faculty and any other departmental staff that assist with internship placement can be added to this Active List at any time.

Emergency Placement Request

The Internship Coordinator is available to assist internship practicum instructors whose students are having difficulty finding placements from the departmental master lists. This option is ONLY available after the student and instructor have exhausted all internship resources, including the semester’s active list. The faculty member will also be required to complete the online *Emergency Placement Form, located under the forms  tab. The OEL Internship Program will need to know the circumstances of the failure to find placement and the student’s specialization. 

In this situation, the OEL Internship Program Coordinator will re-engage the departmental masterlist to make inquiries about hiring a student with that specialization. The internship practicum instructor will be notified as employers express interest, and the departmental active list will be updated. 

The *Emergency Internship Placement Request form should be completed by the practicum instructor when students have exhausted all efforts to find an internship through the standard process by the census date of the current semester. 

6. Monitor student progress – It is important that the course instructor keep up with the student throughout the course of the semester. Whether it be a midterm evaluation, journals, weekly, monthly or quarterly meetings, the faculty should keep abreast of the students progress. This also means ensuring student employers submit evaluations of the student as they are considered a required document.
Provide Supervision and Guidance to Student and Employer Instructors agrees to be available to student and employer throughout the course of the semester.

Advising the OEL Internship Program director of issues with the employers

Faculty should first advise their department chair of the issue. 

The director will only intercede with the employer to remediate a situation at the request of the department chair. 

The director will provide advice and support for faculty, as well as documentation in case of a complaint. 

The employer may be removed from the master list if requested by the department chair. 

7. Submit Final Evaluations – Faculty should complete an OLE Internship Program evaluation to assess the internship experience from the perspective of the internship practicum instructor, and offer feedback to the OEL Internship Program for program improvements.