Making Internships Transformative through Reflective Practice

In the MPA summer internship program, students engage in reflective practice that includes goal-setting, storytelling, supervisor feedback, infographics, and reflection papers.

This process provides an opportunity for the internship to be a transformative professional experience, in addition to the traditional benefits of internships, such as skill development, relationship-building, and exposure to a new sector.

“We take seriously the academic component of the internship,” said Natalia Trujillo, acting director of the MPA Program. “We push our students to be reflective practitioners, combining both systematic reflection and study with practice-based learning.”

To make the experience accessible, the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service provides a $3,000 internship stipend, and students who intern in Washington, D.C. receive housing support, as well.

The culminating assignment prompts the students to write a story about a moment in their internship that epitomized an important lesson they learned that impacted their professional journeys.

Yaritza Holguin described how she coped with the deep self-doubt and unease, known as impostor syndrome, during her internship on Capitol Hill. Robert Bentlyewski told how the immigrant child detention crisis made him reconsider his plans for a comfortable, calm career as an administrator. Older Vera wrote of how his internship helped him find hope and stay positive amidst the downpour of negative news in Washington.

Other assignments help students monitor and reflect on their own progress by setting clear goals. “These need to be SMART goals – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound – that align with the students’ professional needs,” said Salome Gvinianidze, who manages experiential learning programs. “Then the students brainstorm what will be necessary to achieve these goals during their 10-week internship.”

Next, students complete a mid-summer assignment reflecting on which skills and concepts taught in their MPA courses have been most and least relevant to their internships.

Older Vera, for example, explored how logic models and theories of change were used in fundraising at the D.C.-based advocacy group Public Citizen, where he interned.

“Students do not understand how all that classroom knowledge comes into play until they experience it firsthand,” wrote Vera. “MPA courses may appear to overwhelm students with many theories, but it sure pays to be familiar with them.”

Supervisor feedback is essential, but a typical end-of-summer evaluation form can get lost in the shuffle and lose its effect. To make the feedback more meaningful, the MPA program has developed an online survey to be administered mid-semester, with questions focused on how the student is impacting the organization’s work, so students can act on the feedback before the summer ends. 

To keep their hard skills in shape, students produce an infographic that summarizes the key outcomes of their work at the organization, emphasizing what they have contributed or how the organization has impacted society.

Finally, students write a culminating paper that assesses their progress toward their initial SMART goals, reflects on what was most meaningful in the internship, and envisions how they can apply what they learned to their next professional steps as social impact professionals.

To read our students' internship stories, or to find out more about our approach to learning, our alumni, our faculty, and more, visit our MPA Blog.

Pictured above: First-year MPA students reflect on job sectors and roles in public service in an interactive career development workshop. 

Apply now to join our fall 2019 cohort!
Apply Now

 

Subscribe to podcast via RSS

<< Back to blog