miami university

Master’s Degree Program in Technical and Scientific Communication

Regulations Governing Internships

For Employers of MTSC Interns

Introduction

Miami University’s Master’s Degree Program in Technical and Scientific Communication (MTSC) is a practice-oriented, professional program that prepares students for careers as technical and scientific communicators. The program takes a problem-solving approach, teaching strategies that are applicable to communication problems in a variety of media, including print and computer-generated communications.

The MTSC internship, an integral part of this program, is intended to provide students with supervised, first-hand experience at applying what they have learned in their classes to the kinds of professional situations they will encounter in their careers. Internships are also designed to help students gain or extend their direct, personal knowledge of the profession and its practices.

A student fulfills the internship requirement by completing two activities: (1) working as an apprentice technical and scientific communicator, and (2) preparing a formal report on this work. For both of these activities, the student works under the direction of an Internship Supervisory Committee consisting of three faculty members (sometimes four), who are selected by the student.

Students may perform the internship as soon as they complete six of the eight required courses in the MTSC program. These six courses must include Introduction to Technical and Scientific Communication and Technical and Scientific Writing.

Internship Placement

The essential feature of an internship is that the student works full-time for at least sixteen weeks (or fourteen weeks in the summer) in a professional capacity with the guidance of a person knowledgeable about technical and scientific communication. A student may arrange the internship with a business, government, or non-profit organization anywhere in the world.

In the internship, the student should perform professional duties similar to those that he or she hopes to perform after graduation. Thus, the student might work for your organization as a writer or editor, or even as a manager, if the student has had previous experience as a professional communicator and if he or she can work under the guidance of an appropriate mentor.

Previous MTSC Internship employers have included:

If you do not normally hire "interns" but only permanent employees, a student may perform an internship as a fourteen- or sixteen-week segment of a permanent position with your firm. Moreover, a student who works as a practicing technical or scientific communicator while studying in the MTSC program may perform the internship with his or her current employer.

Internships Involving Classified, Confidential, Or Proprietary Information

Students may perform internships in situations where they will be working with classified, confidential, or proprietary information. In these situations, agreements must be worked out in advance between your organization and the supervisory committee concerning the contents of the student’s internship report. The University recognizes the need for some organizations to protect information and believes that mutually satisfactory arrangements can be worked out in most cases. However, students must be able to share samples of their work with their supervisory committees, and they must have completed some significant work during the internship that they can discuss in detail and display in their internship reports.

Internship Proposal

Before the student begins work in your organization, the student must obtain permission for the internship from his or her supervisory committee and the MTSC Program Director. The student does this by collaborating with someone in your organization to fill out the enclosed form. The form must be submitted before the internship can begin.

This form describes the following things:

  1. The name and address of the sponsoring organization.
  2. A brief description of the nature of the sponsoring organization’s work.
  3. A description of the various projects the student is likely to be assigned during his or her internship.
  4. The dates of the internship.
  5. The name of the student’s mentor and his or her contact information.
  6. A brief description of the mentor’s experience with the field of technical communication.

The Internship Form will also require the student’s mentor to agree to the following assurances:

  1. The sponsoring organization will pay the student.
  2. The writing mentor and student will meet weekly to discuss the student’s progress.
  3. The sponsoring organization will allow the student to share samples of his or her internship work with the supervisory committee and to publish representative samples of that work in the internship report.
  4. The sponsoring organization will provide the intern with an appropriate orientation to the organization.
  5. The sponsoring organization will evaluate the student at five weeks by initiating a conversation between the student’s mentor and internship committee Chair.
  6. The sponsoring organization will evaluate the student in writing at the end of his or her internship and share this written evaluation with the student’s internship committee.

The Internship form will also require the following assurances from the student:

  1. That the work assigned for the internship period is consistent with his or her supplementary courses in the Plan of Study and with his or her professional goals.
  2. That he or she will perform the work specified in the Internship Form.
  3. That he or she will write two progress reports (these can be submitted by email) to be submitted during the fifth and tenth weeks describing the progress of the internship.

When the student’s committee and the Program Director have reviewed and approved the Internship Form, the committee chair will inform the student and the internship supervisor, and the student may begin work.

Internship Report

At the end of the internship, the student must write a formal report on his or her internship experience. The purpose of this report is for the student to present a detailed, case study of the internship experience. The student does not have to complete an activity in order to write about it, but the major activity described in the report should have been a significant activity in the intern’s entire work experience. In the final chapter of the report, the student is asked to focus on the use of problem-solving approaches to technical communication. The report also serves to inform faculty and students in the program about the practice of technical communication in your organization and to help students who have not yet performed their internships to understand what they can expect.

For More Information

Please address your questions about the internship to:
Dr. Jean Lutz
Director, Master’s Degree Program in Technical and Scientific Communication
Department of English
Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056
513-529-5221
lutzja@muohio.edu

Master Of Technical And Scientific Communication Program [MTSC]
English Department
Miami University
Phone: (513) 529-5221
Fax: (513) 529-1392
E-mail: MTSC@muohio.edu

Internship Proposal for Sponsors, Interns, and Internship Committees

To help sponsoring organizations and interns benefit as much as possible from the internship experience, we are asking that a representative of the sponsoring organization and the intern fill out this form at the time the sponsoring organization offers a job and the intern accepts it. The intern should send copies of the signed document to the committee chair and to the director of the MTSC program.