Regulations Governing Internships
For MTSC Students
Introduction
An integral part of the MTSC program, the internship will provide you with supervised, first-hand experience at applying what you’ve learned in your classes to the kinds of professional situations you’ll encounter in your career. It also will help you to extend your knowledge of the profession and its practices. As part of your formal education, the internship is designed to provide you with an even richer learning experience than you would normally obtain during your first months on a new job.
Overall, you can fulfill the internship requirement by completing two activities:
- working as an apprentice technical and scientific communicator, and
- preparing a formal report on this work.
In these activities, you will work under the direction of an Internship Supervisory Committee consisting of three faculty members (sometimes four), whom you will select. (For a more complete description of this committee, see "Supervisory Committee," p.3.)
You may perform the internship as soon as you complete six of the eight required courses in the program; these six courses must include English 692 (Introduction to Technical and Scientific Communication) and 694 (Technical and Scientific Writing).
Internship Placement
The essential feature of an internship is that you work full-time for at least one semester (or fourteen weeks in the summer) in a professional capacity with the guidance of a person knowledgeable about technical and scientific communication. Three requirements are particularly important here:
- You must work full-time for at least 15 weeks.
- You must perform meaningful work as a professional technical or scientific communicator. This means work as a writer or editor, or even as a publications manager if you’ve had appropriate experience.
- You must work under the guidance of an appropriate mentor on-site, someone who can advise you about your work.
You may perform your internship with a business, government, or non—profit organization anywhere in the world.
So that you leave the program with a consistent focus in your work, your choice of internship must be consistent with the professional area you’ve declared in your MTSC Plan of Study and with the elective and supplementary course work you’ve outlined in that plan. You’ll have to explain in a written internship proposal to your supervisory committee the connection between your internship and your course work. If you’re unable to do this to the satisfaction of your committee, you’ll be asked either to modify your internship or to take additional courses consistent with your internship choice.
For example, if you’ve declared medical writing as your professional area in your Plan of Study and you’ve proposed elective or supplementary courses to support that choice, your committee would expect you to perform your internship in medical writing. If you chose, instead, to perform an internship writing computer software documentation, your committee would expect you (a) to already have substantial course work (at least 9 semester hours) or work experience relating to computers, or (b) to complete either elective or supplementary courses in this area.
However, if you accepted an internship in which you were to write computer documentation for an application requiring specialized knowledge of medicine (for example, medical diagnostics), that internship would be consistent with your choice of medical writing as a professional area.
Some organizations may have no provision for hiring "interns" and may, instead, wish to hire you as a permanent employee. In this case, your internship may be a fifteen-week segment of your permanent job. Also, if you are working as a practicing technical or scientific communicator while studying in the MTSC program, you may perform your internship with your current employer.
Finding An Internship
The initial responsibility for finding an internship is yours, although you may consult the program’s faculty for guidance. You should begin your internship search at leadt three months before you wish to perform the internship.
If after conscientious search, you’re unable to find a satisfactory internship on your own, you may ask to be placed by the Executive Committee. However, you are more likely than the committee to find an internship that involves exactly the kind of work you want to do after graduation. Further, it may take the committee longer to find an internship than it would take you if you continue your own search.
Internships involving classified, confidential, or proprietary information
You may perform internships in a situation where you’ll will be working with classified, confidential, or proprietary information. In such a situation, an agreement must be worked out in advance between the sponsoring organization and your supervisory committee concerning the contents of your internship report. The University recognizes the need of some organizations to protect information and believes that mutually satisfactory arrangements can be worked out in most cases. However, you must be able to share samples of your work with your supervisory committees, and you must have completed some significant work during the internship that you can discuss in detail and display in your internship report.
Forming Your Supervisory Committee
The internship advisory committee is composed of three members, occasionally four, who are selected by you with the approval of the MTSC Director. You must choose two of these members from among the MTSC faculty in English; one of these members will serve as chair. The other member(s) may be drawn from among the other faculty who teach in your technical or scientific specialty.
You should choose your supervisory committee as soon as your internship prospects seem reasonably firm. You may consult the program Director for advice about the composition of your committee.
Faculty in the English Department who specialize in technical communication will chair and serve on an equal number of internship committees for each MTSC class. Exceptions may be made if the faculty member involved, the MTSC Executive Committee, and the Chair of the Department all agree.
Proposing Your Internship
Before you begin work in your new position, you must obtain permission for the internship from your supervisory committee and the MTSC Program Director. Do 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:
- The name and address of the sponsoring organization.
- A brief description of the nature of the sponsoring organization’s work.
- A description of the various projects the student is likely to be assigned during your internship.
- The dates of the internship.
- The name of your mentor and his or her contact information.
- A brief description of your mentor’s experience with the field of technical communication.
The Internship Form will also require your mentor to agree to the following assurances:
- The sponsoring organization will pay you.
- You and your writing mentor will meet weekly to discuss your progress.
- The sponsoring organization will allow you to share samples of your internship work with the supervisory committee and to publish representative samples of that work in the internship report.
- The sponsoring organization will provide you with an appropriate orientation to the organization.
- The sponsoring organization will evaluate you at five weeks by initiating a conversation between your mentor and internship committee Chair.
- The sponsoring organization will evaluate you in writing at the end of your internship and share this written evaluation with your internship committee.
The Internship form will also require the following assurances from you:
- That the work assigned for the internship period is consistent with your supplementary courses in the Plan of Study and with your professional goals.
- That you will perform the work specified in the Internship Form.
- That you 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 your committee and the Program Director have reviewed and approved the Internship Form, the committee chair will inform you and the internship supervisor, and you may begin work.
Internship Report
At the end of the internship, you must write a formal report on your internship experience. The purpose of this report is for you to present a detailed, case study of your internship experience. You do 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 your entire work experience. In the final chapter of the report, you are 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.
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.
I. The Sponsoring Organization
Name of the sponsoring organization:
_____________________________________________________________________
Address of sponsoring organization:
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________.
II. The Sponsoring Organization’s Work and the Intern’s Responsibilities
Nature of the sponsoring organization’s work:
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________.
Description of several projects that will be assigned to the intern during the sixteen weeks during the fall/spring or fourteen weeks in the summer. (Internships may be longer, or may be adjusted to meet special circumstances.)
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
The dates of the internship:
___________________________________________________________________
III. Mentoring for the Intern
Name, title, and contact information for intern’s writing mentor:
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________.
Mentor’s experience with technical communication (attach resume if feasible):
_____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________.
IV. Assurances from the Sponsoring Organization (SO)
Signature (below) of the internship mentor indicates agreement on the following six issues:
- The sponsoring organization (SO) will pay the intern.
- The SO’s writing mentor will meet weekly to discuss the progress of the intern’s work.
- The SO will assure that the intern can share samples of his/her work with the committee and will be able to publish samples of this work in the internship report, a document available to the public through the Miami University Library.
- The SO will provide the intern with an appropriate orientation to the organization.
- The SO will evaluate the intern at five weeks by initiating a conversation or email between the mentor and the Chair of the internship committee.
- The SO will evaluate the intern in writing at the end of the internship and share this evaluation with the intern’s committee.
______________________________
(Please type or print name)
_____________________________
(Please sign)
For the sponsoring organization
Date: ______________________________
V. Assurances from Intern
Signature (below) of the intern indicates agreement on the three following issues:
- That the work assigned for the internship period is consistent with his/her supplementary courses in the Plan of Study and with his/her professional goals.
- That he/she will perform the work specified in Item II.
- That he/she will write two progress reports (these can be transmitted by email) to be submitted during the fifth and tenth weeks describing the progress of the internship.
______________________________
(Please type or print name)
______________________________
(Please sign)
Intern
Date: ______________________________
VI. Approvals by MTSC Program
______________________________
(Please type or print name)
_____________________________
(Please sign)
Chair, Internship Committee
Other committee members:
______________________________
Reader
______________________________
Reader
________________________________
Director, MTSC
Date: ___________________________