GUIDELINES FOR ELC INTERNSHIPS

ELC Internships--ENGL 499, LING 499, or COMM 499--are part of the campus-wide internship program, offering qualified students the chance to learn and earn college credit through off-campus work experience. Our interns have held positions with weekly and daily newspapers, radio and television stations, public relations departments of businesses and institutions (such as hospitals, museums, and city visitor centers), membership departments, law firms, technical writing businesses, libraries, schools--the list goes on and on.

To arrange an internship, you will need to work both with the ELC Department and with the office of Career Services in George Washington Hall. You can begin by talking with a member of the ELC faculty who has supervised internships or by reviewing the enormous list of possibilities in Career Services.

The ELC Department has established the following rules and guidelines regarding internships sponsored by the department. These supplement those issued by Career Services.

1. Internships are open only to juniors and seniors.
2. Only three credits of ENGL 499, LING 499, or COMM 499 can count toward the English major. (In addition to these three, the student may earn up to nine elective credits toward the degree.)
3. The content of the internship must be appropriate to sponsorship by the ELC Department. Typically, the internship draws on writing, research, analytical, oral, and/or linguistic skills the department emphasizes.
4. The internship must provide the student with a significant learning experience.
5. The faculty member sponsoring the internship must have competency in the subject matter of the internship.
6. The student must have education and/or experience appropriate to the internship. For example, any student seeking and internship involving journalistic writing or editing--e.g. with a newspaper, a magazine, public relations department, a television station--must have taken ENGL 200 (Newsgathering) and preferably also ENGL 300 (Newspaper writing) or ENGL 301 (Magazine Writing) or must have comparable experience.
7. The proposal must be approved by the faculty sponsor, the departmental committee on internships, and the office of Career Services.
8. A faculty member will sponsor no more than three internships per semester.

2/9/96

Submit the internship application and an accompanying statement explaining your qualifications for the internship, its relevance to your major, and the academic component on which you and your advisor have agreed, no later than end of the second week of the semester, to the chair of the ELC Committee on Internships. The 2009-10 chair is Dr. Richards.

To view a sample proposal, click here. To download a checksheet that lists the steps for submitting an internship, click here.