Post-Internship Solutions: IS Seniors Are Making It Work

The success of the Coker Interdisciplinary Studies program has come at a precarious time: 15 seniors are working toward graduation this semester, and 13 of them were in internships, each planning on 135 hours in a placement with a business, service, or organization. They were learning about careers, applying their coursework to real-life situations, observing and applying problem-solving and perspective-taking, and in general making that last push toward graduation and entering grad schools and the career market with just that much more preparation.

All but three of those internships ended with COVID-19, leaving students halfway (or just a third of the way) into their experience - and missing the rest. (Hooray for Sierra, who is still working on a website for FirstSteps; Angelique, who continues to research and work on marketing for the Hartsville Key; and Asa, who is researching employee support services for the Coker Human Resource office! Last ones standing.)

Let's pretend that none of them said (or at least thought) "Can we just cut the rest of the hours?" - in any case, it took us all about a week to "pivot" into our new responsibilities, and here is what we did:

I broke down the purpose of internships into four components:

• Career Research
• Applying Coursework in a Real Work Environment
• Building Interdisciplinary Skills
• Practicing Research Skills and Intellectual Curiosity

Then I created a table of ten types of projects and activities that would each promote one to three of those components, and let my students choose between two and four of those projects, depending on the depth they wanted to go into, and the hours they were still missing toward fulfilling their requirements.




In our individual check-ins this week, I was able to make further suggestions on many projects-in-progress, such as:

• a mock-up of a summer camp (play and learning) for young children in Sumter
• interviews with two health care professionals (a Family Practitioner and a Registered Nurse) about job responsibilities and job satisfaction
• a business expansion and marketing plan for a family plumbing business
• research into four commonly observed issues and therapies encountered in occupational therapy
• research into professional organizations, websites, and certification programs in physical therapy and occupational therapy
• a proposal of an addition to the recreational offerings of the South Louisville Community Center: a softball league, complete with marketing analysis and tournament scheduling
• research into the most commonly prescribed medications accompanying physical therapy
• certification through an online IT support course

Students are tracking the hours they are working toward these projects, and they report their findings through a google doc. At the end of the semester, they will present all their work, in a short video, to advisors and each other - it would be challenging to round up all their discipline-specific faculty, schedule google hangout presentations, and overcome their specific technical, internet-related, and home-based challenges. (I am hearing a lot of young family members and dogs in the background when we meet - and not everyone is sufficiently connected to join on camera.)

I know this is not what we had in mind when we set out on the adventure of IS400 capstone projects - in spite of weekly class meetings on google hangout and vast numbers of emails and phone conversations (my own internet gets a little shaky) for individual check-ins, we are all feeling a little bereft, I believe. But: we are making it work. Because that was the commitment we made to ourselves and each other.

I did promise them that, whenever graduation is rescheduled, I would sit there for them, on the hot asphalt, even in August, to watch all 15 of them walk across that stage. They deserve it. (I do, too.)