ROANOKECOLLEGE
INTERNSHIP REQUIREMENTS
COMMUNICATIONS
Goals and Types of Internship Opportunities
Internships in the department are intended to provide the student with experience in the field of applied communications: (1) in one of the major media (newspaper, magazine, or book publishing; radio, television, recordings, or cinema) or their attendant industries (public relations, advertising), or (2) in an area of corporate or organizational communications.
Application Procedures
An internship in communications begins with the initiative of the student. After an initial dialogue with the faculty supervisor, the student submits a formal application for a communications internship. The formal application includes a brief proposal in which the student describes the type of work s/he desires based on past experience, interests, and training. The application is due at least three weeks before the beginning of the academic semester or summer session in which the internship is to be completed.
General Internship Requirements
1. A 2.5 overall GPA is required.
2. Junior standing or higher is required.
3. The pre-requisite course COMM 101 or 102 must be completed prior to the internship.
4. The permission of the faculty supervisor is required.
Internship Procedures
(1)The internship must cover a minimum of 110 hours, with at least two hours per work day.
(2)Interns must attend regularly scheduled meetings with the faculty supervisor and other interns currently enrolled
in the program (minimum of 10 pre-arranged hours per semester).
(3)Interns must maintain a thorough daily journal of their experiences with entries of 150-word minimal length each; observations and commentary to include in the journal can range from topics related to the intern's specific job duties (tasks, training, scheduling, workflow, equipment used, and so on) to perspectives on the corporate culture or communication styles of the internship site. Further, interns are required to bring their journals to the scheduled meetings with the faculty supervisor and other interns and be prepared to report their observations.
(4)At the conclusion of the internship, students will submit an essay of no fewer than 1200 words. Based in part on the daily journal, the essay is to be a comprehensive report of the internship: a record of work done, tasks completed, projects undertaken, people and events on the job, team work experiences, valuable lessons learned, difficult moments and how they were negotiated, instances of demonstrated initiative and leadership, and anything else that contributes to a portrait of the student's internship experience. The report should be essentially self-evaluative. In addition, students should submit a portfolio of the work which they produced (articles, video or audio tapes, photographs, multi-media presentations on disk, training or operations manuals, reports, letters, memos, etc.). The portfolio will be returned upon request. The daily journal must be submitted together with the final essay for final review.
(5)Interns must meet with the faculty supervisor at the end of the semester for an evaluation of the internship based on the input of the student, faculty supervisor, and employment supervisor.
The final grade will be determined by the instructor, who may confer with the work supervisor and/or the department chairperson in reaching that determination. All written materials submitted to fulfill requirements will be evaluated with strict adherence to the rules of formal grammar, usage, and style.
Once the internship has been approved, the student is expected to conform to the dress and conduct codes of the work site. Specific additional guidelines may be set down by the work supervisor.