Participating in a Technical Communication Internship

INTRODUCTION Academic internships have long been an important component of many students’ college education. Although internship programs have been around for over a century at some colleges, the importance of the academic internship has increased significantly in the past few years (Coco 2000). Employers today are seeking to hire people who can jump into a position and make an immediate contribution. They expect new hires to not only have a solid academic background but also workplace experience related to their profession. Students who have both are in demand. Internships offer students a chance to get work experience and gain a competitive advantage in the job market. In fact, internships often become full-time jobs when students graduate. For example, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Szuchman and colleagues (2005) report that the percentage of interns at major employers in 2004 that went on to full-time positions with the company was 38% compared with 25% in 2001. The tight job market, the dynamic nature of the technical communication profession, and feedback from industry has encouraged academic programs to develop a variety of approaches such as service learning (Rehling 2000), mini-internships (Hager 1990), and experiential learning (Southard 1988) for students to gain workplace experience before they graduate. Although service learning, for example, with its focus on civic engagement and community citizenship, has been gaining attention as an effective way for technical communication students to get hands-on work experience and meet pressing needs in their communities (Munger 2002; Sapp and Crabtree 2002), there is little question that traditional academic internships provide a valuable learning experience (Cook, Parker, and Pettijohn 2004) and should be an important component of students’ career preparation. Internships are standard in technical communication programs outside the U.S. (Alred 2001), and common in U.S. programs (Harner and Rich 2005; Norman and Stohrer 1990). Over the years, several authors have addressed the benefits of technical communication internships to students and technical communication programs (see, for example, Coggin 1989; Emerick 1994; Gaitens 2000; Little 1993; Savage 1997; Tovey 2001; Winsor 2001; Wyld 1983). Businesses and organizations also benefit from internships. Reports from employers representing not only the technical communication industry but also professions likely to employ technical communicators suggest that internships are a great way to address current needs within an organization (Liddy and Thomas 2001), establish strong relationships with academic programs (Sutliff 2000), and identify promising students before they graduate (Crumbley and Sumners 1998). Lurkis (2001), a student STC member, reports that interns bring to a company enthusiasm, up-to-date knowledge, hard-to-find technology skills, and low salary expectations. For example, the outsourcing director for Sara Lee Household & Body Care describes an internship as “a tradeoff of giving people a good experience for their career, good coaching, in exchange for good work, a lot of work, and not a real high salary” (Hickey 2003). Although the benefits of internships seem clear, the path to participating in a successful technical communication internship experience is not always clear and advice is often scattered across many articles and Web sites. If you are a current student or a practitioner who is considering a return to school, you might have questions about finding internship opportunities, evaluating your options, and getting the most out of the experience. If you are a new internship coordinator, you might wonder how to manage