Internships for Credit: Linking Work Experience to Political Science Learning Objectives

Abstract

Responding to student concerns about the market value of an undergraduate degree in Political Science, many departments offer students the opportunity to earn credits toward their degree by completing relevant internships. This raises two important questions: what sort of internship experiences should qualify as a Political Science internship and how can faculty ensure that internships contribute to students’ professional and academic development? I contend that the criteria for granting Political Science credits for an internship experience should emphasize the likelihood that the internship experience will help the student achieve some of the specific learning objectives that Political Science departments typically set forth for their students rather than focusing on the nature of the organization where they complete their internship. I also argue that designing complementary academic assignments that require students to utilize the research, analytic, and communication skills we expect our students to develop during their undergraduate career is the best way we can ensure that a Political Science internship not only enhances our students’ marketability but also contributes to students’ achievement of discipline-specific learning objectives.

Keywords:

• Internship
• experiential learning
• undergraduate research
• course design

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Victoria Washington for research assistance. The author also thanks the participants of the “General Education & Interdisciplinary Teaching Track” at the 2020 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference for their feedback on a preliminary draft of this essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 However, McClellan, Kopko, and Gruber (2021) and Van Vechten (2021) note that positive gains in critical thinking are modest, and that it has not been established that internships have a significant impact on students’ analytical skills, their ability to apply theories to real-world problems, or their depth of subject knowledge.

2 These career readiness competencies are career and self-development, communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalization, teamwork, and technology.

3 These essential learning outcomes are inquiry and analysis, critical thinking, creative thinking, written communication, oral communication, quantitative literacy, information literacy, reading, teamwork, problem solving, civic knowledge and engagement (local and global), intercultural knowledge and competence, ethical reasoning and action, global learning, foundations and skills for lifelong learning, and integrative learning.

4 Faculty can attempt to exert influence over student interns’ day-to-day activities, and therefore avoid the situation in which interns are not assigned tasks that will contribute to their professional development, by creating an internship contract that clarifies what is expected of the intern, the on-site internship supervisor, and the faculty member. See Pecorella (2007), Sosland and Lowenthal (2017), Berg (2021), and Lowenthal and Sosland (2021) for a discussion of the benefits of, and best practices surrounding, the use of internship contracts.

5 My syllabus and assignment prompts are available at APSA Educate: https://educate.apsanet.org/resource/05-19-2023/political-science-internship-syllabus-and-assignment-prompts

6 Certainly, the set of assignments I discuss can most easily be implemented by faculty who supervise in-house internship programs. However, faculty who work with students who complete an internship as part of an externally administered program (e.g., “semester in Washington” programs) may be able to require students to complete some of these assignments as part of pre-internship of post-internship briefing processes.

7 IRB approval was not sought for this manuscript because the anecdotal references to student internships and assignments (1) meet the standard set by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Human Research Protections for exemption as “research, conducted in established or commonly accepted educational settings, that specifically involves normal educational practices … [including] research on the effectiveness of or the comparison among instructional techniques, curricula, or classroom management methods” (45 CFR §46.104(d)(1)) and (2) they do not constitute “human subject research” inasmuch as they do not examine human behavior, opinions, or attitudes.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Edward Lucas

Kevin Edward Lucas, before beginning his doctoral studies, Kevin Lucas completed a nine-month work/study abroad program in Ecuador and he spent nearly five years living and working in El Salvador, including three-plus years as a Peace Corps Volunteer. During this period, he taught English as a Second Language at the Escuela Hernando Táquez in Ecuador and the Instituto Nacional de La Laguna in El Salvador. His teaching and research interests include party politics, public opinion, voting behavior, economic and political development, democracy and democratization, and human rights, with a focus on contemporary Latin America. He has published and/or presented research on Ecuador’s education system, on the impact of dollarization in Ecuador and El Salvador, on party polarization in Brazil, on voting behavior in El Salvador, on the relationship between ideological labels and voting behavior across Latin America, and on the development of the region’s party systems. He has conducted field research in Ecuador, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. Before his arrival at Capital University, he taught at the University of Minnesota, the State University of New York at Geneseo, and Lycoming College. He is also a Visiting Instructor in the School of Economics at the Universidad de El Salvador.