Vol. 8 No. 2
Winter, 2005
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Newsletter Vol. 8 No. 2 Winter, 2005 |
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It's Time to Rock the Mission
Let's Rock the Mission! This year we have scheduled the ICIG business meeting for late in the evening on Thursday August 11. We did this deliberately. It's early in the convention so everyone should be there. And, it's later in the evening where there would be no conflict with other division business meetings. So, save the date and time and join us for the first ever ICIG combination business meeting and social! Thursday August 11, at 8:30 PM. We'll bring the wine and song; you bring your ideas for the business and the bright future of ICIG. Do you work with students who want to get jobs after they graduate? Do you work with students doing internships? Are you or your colleagues working with businesses in your area to provide better education, internship, and career opportunities for your students? If you can answer "yes" to any one of these questions, then the Internships and Careers Interest Group is the place for you. Join us in San Antonio this summer for our business meeting social on Thursday at 8:30 PM. You'll be glad you did. SanAntonio 2005: Chip Auction Results Bil Morrill, ICIG Vice-Head
& Program Chair
Early in December I was able to spend a weekend in San Antonio at the AEJMC Winter Meeting. Admittedly, I am new to this organization, so I had no idea what to expect. I was able to get to San Antonio early and was able to visit part of San Antonio and the Alamo. What a beautiful city. I was humbled to tour the Alamo and read and listen to the accounts of what happened many years ago. The courage these individuals had to stand up and fight for what they believed in must have been tremendous. It also started to make me feel bad for actually being scared and a bit nervous for the reason I was in San Antonio that chilly December weekend. The Chip Auction! I then remembered that I would not be alone in this, and that with the help of Marian Azzaro I would be making it through the weekend unscathed. I am happy to say that we made it through the chip auction fairly well, and were able to accomplish all that we had wanted to. We went in Saturday night with a tentative plan, and with some great wheeling & dealing by Marian, we were able to make many agreements that I feel will help us to have a great convention this summer. I thought I would give you an overview (ok, panel titles only, but if you want more, come to San Antonio!) of what to expect during the conference this summer in San Antonio. We are sponsoring/co-sponsoring 1 pre-conference session and 5 general conference sessions.
Now if that doesn't excite you, I'm not sure what will. I am also excited about many other sessions at this conference that we were not able to co-sponsor but still were scheduled by other interest groups and divisions. I look forward to returning to San Antonio this summer and enjoying the sessions that are being planned. I want to thank Marian for the help she gave me at this year's Winter Meeting. The calm she brings is contagious and it is exactly what I needed to make it through my first chip auction. If you don't have August 10-13th already marked on your calendar, stop reading and do it now. We are looking forward to meeting each and every one of you this summer. Carson B. Wagner, Research Chair
ICIG welcomes research from a variety of methodologies and perspectives, from surveys, experiments, and content analyses to making students more attractive to employers and making internships more attractive to students. Past presentations have surrounded some of the most intriguing posers we face on a daily basis, such as differing expectations between employers and students, the use of internship supervisor evaluations for program assessment, the benefits of internal college internships, preparing journalism students for the convergent newsroom, and how undergraduates process persuasive messages about internships. We hope you'll consider joining ICIG's proud tradition of research, and we look forward to seeing you in San Antonio! To enter, please send three copies of your work to me by mail @: Carson
B. Wagner Please limit papers to no more than 25 pages (double-spaced) in length, excluding tables and references, and please feel free to email (carson.wagner@mail.utexas.edu) me if you have any questions, or if you would like to volunteer to help review the submissions. Many thanks. Rachele Kanigel, PF&R Chair
Some months ago a student came into my office asking for advice about applying for internships. She had the beginnings of a resume and cover letter, and I made a few suggestions for making them more professional. But I had something else on my mind. This student was one of the best writers on the student newspaper staff. She was bright and talented and assertive. She could go far. But she had one trait that I knew could kill her career - she was a prima donna. In the student newspaper class she was always complaining about how unprofessional everyone else was. She sent me e-mail messages griping about the way her editors treated her. She resisted editing, battling over every suggested change. By the middle of her first semester the editors at the paper were fed up with her. So was the professional newspaper editor for whom she had interned the previous summer. "She's great - but she's a pain in the ass," he told me. "I'd never hire her again." It was a delicate situation. Should I let her learn this lesson on her own? Clearly it would be easier for me to just edit her resume and let her find the rest out for herself. But as she sat there in my office, I decided to broach the subject. I started by explaining how the hiring process worked - how editors were looking for good writing skills and sharp minds but that they were also looking for people who were... I paused, unable to come up with the right word. I tried again, noting that editors wanted interns to be willing to work hard without complaint, people willing to do anything.... Once again, I halted. "Humble," the young woman said. "They want interns to be humble." I smiled. She got it. We talked a little more and I gently explained to her that a negative attitude could ruin a great opportunity. She nodded her head. I didn't specifically mention her past behavior, but she seemed to understand. And when she left the office she thanked me. I leaned back in my chair, satisfied with our conversation and pleased that I had raised the difficult subject. So often when we counsel students about internships and jobs we focus on the tangible - the clips and the resume, the cover letter and the standard interview questions. But most of us know that much about the hiring process revolves around the intangible - the personal connection the recruiter or editor has with the student, the back and forth of the conversation, whether the recruiter takes a liking to the student. It's hard to turn a misfit into a social swan, and that's not really our job, but we should help students think about how they come off to potential employers. We need to give them clues about the subtleties of the interview process and how important attitude and enthusiasm are. These conversations can be difficult. It means telling the slovenly reporter to put on a neat outfit and suggesting the punked-out student remove the lip ring for the interview (I did that once.) It means telling the reserved student to put more excitement in his voice and encouraging the passive one to be more assertive. And it means teaching the prima donnas to be -- well, humble. Rosanne Pagano,
Many JMC programs require students completing internships for academic credit to track their experience in progress reports like the food journals. Students log hours they've spent at an internship site, enter a note or two about what they accomplished that day or week and anticipate the tasks ahead. Like the food journal, an accurate progress report helps students appreciate that success accumulates day by day. I'm a big fan of internship progress reports. Diligent students intuitively know the report's value and weaker students glimpse how professionals plan projects and organize time. Interns looking back on a semester's worth of project reports often realize that they learned more than they thought-and not all of it pertaining strictly to journalism and mass communications. Honest entries in the progress report track growth in moving from student to professional. Entries reveal a student's growing ability to identify and resolve conflicts, to plan for success, suggest alternatives and contribute to a team. I've read progress reports sprinkled with exclamation points (the intern's supervisor really liked his brochure idea!) or studded with uncertainty (the intern doubted she'd ever master a TV news editing suite). As an internship director, I look forward to reading weekly progress reports the way a parent anticipates those letters home from a child in summer camp: A good progress report not only narrates what happened that week, it hints at how the writer was changed because of it. If you're not requiring a progress report from your JMC interns, I hope you'll consider one now. A form to get you started follows this column. If you're already requiring reports, I hope you'll consider adding a layer to capture some of the on-site informal teaching that can help make or break an internship. It's an idea I'm adapting from Sam Minor and Dan Poenaru, writers who focus on how surgeons are trained. Writing in the November 2002 edition of the American Journal of Surgery, Minor and Poenaru make the case for written and audio logs that capture the day-to-day, informal encounters clinical clerks have with all kinds of hospital staff. "To effectively evaluate a clerkship curriculum," Minor and Poenaru conclude, "it is essential to know what clerks are being taught outside of seminars, how that teaching occurs, and by whom." JMC internship directors would benefit from the same insight into informal teaching. I'm eager to experiment with this enhanced progress report by asking students to briefly log their encounters with anyone who offers instruction at their internship site. I'll start by asking students to track encounters over 24 hours within the first few weeks of their internship. What kinds of tasks are more likely to prompt an intern to seek instruction? Which staffers are sought out for instruction and how much time is spent? How does an intern's temperament or deportment affect the way informal teaching is delivered? I'm interested to see what patterns emerge and how insight into informal teaching at internship sites can help students, field mentors and faculty internship directors improve and assess projects. What should JMC interns log in weekly progress reports? Some questions for students:
Cost-effective Suggestions to Let Internship Supervisors Know that You Value Them. Nancy M. Somerick, Ph.D.,
Professor and Director of Internship Program,
As director of an academic internship program, you may wish to consider cost-effective suggestions for working successfully with internship supervisors who provide your interns with professional quality real-world experience. Without supervisors' participation in your internship program, it could be limited in its effectiveness and could even cease to exist. Therefore, it is important to let supervisors know that you value them. Here are some ideas that could help:
Personal Contact
This kind of thing happens, that's what phone tag is all about, but there comes a time when even the limits of outside probability are stretched. Students may not be entirely straightforward about whether they're actually the ones failing to make appointments and that can complicate matters. That's when a personal appearance, to make sure you witness what both sides are doing, can really clear things up. A student trying to meet a news director to begin an internship had not managed to make a meeting after two weeks. Her reports on when meetings were supposed to happen and what caused them not to merged together and she could not seem to sort them out. It was Friday, we made an appointment for Monday at the earliest possible time. I drove her to the station, sat with her in the waiting room and sent her in for the interview. Things were scheduled and it was a great internship that benefited both sides. A student planning to attend law school wanted a law-related internship. I contacted law firms, who were not interested. The public defender's office was interested, but she never managed to see the person she needed to. One day we just got in my car and drove there. He happened to be in and available. The papers were signed and the internship was scheduled. It was a great experience for them. People on both sides can be hesitant or uneasy about whether to start an internship. For the student it's a plunge into a world that could seem threatening. For the person offering the internship it carries uncertainties about possible lost time, disruption of work flow and other boat-rocking that may not be desired. But when both sides get together and see each other, that usually smoothes things over. And sometimes you have to step in and bring them together. |
I've been thinking about this a lot and I think it's time we do
something. The last couple of years I've been with the Internships and
Careers Interest Group I have watched how we run things like our
business meetings and our programming for the annual conferences. I have
seen some really outstanding work performed for ICIG by truly dedicated
people. Unfortunately, I have also seen some really outstanding work
done for other divisions and interest groups; terrific work that would
have fit perfectly with the mission of ICIG; work that might well have
been submitted to ICIG. I think it is time we do something to put ICIG
on the map and I can't think of a better time and place than San
Antonio. So hear my rallying cry...
It's that time again! April 1,
AEJMC's paper submission deadline, is quickly approaching, and we at
ICIG invite and encourage you to submit your internship- and
career-related research to our annual open paper competition.
Anyone
who's tried to diet away a few pounds is familiar with those little
journals that organize the day not by appointments kept or tasks
completed but by meals and snacks consumed. Love it or hate it, an
accurate journal reveals moments of willpower and weakness, turning
points and stumbling blocks. Kept even for just a few days, the
journals can be effective tools for reinforcing new habits and shedding
old ones.
Sometimes it takes a little face-to-face
activity to make things happen. Students can make contacts, arrange
for interviews and show up, but sometimes it's hard for them to
actually talk to the person they need to see to arrange an internship.
People are busy, called away unexpectedly or held up by someone who
just won't leave. There are lots of reasons why people might be unable
to keep appointments and sometimes those things happen to prevent a
whole series of appointments from taking place. I've had that happen
to students who were trying to meet a person responsible for
scheduling their internships.