Although the college curriculum is considered to be the crux of any college education, I must say that internships have become increasingly important as college students graduate and seek to become professionals in their selected field of interest. Each year I repeatedly hear from graduates who claim that it was their internship(s) that gave them the skills and experience they needed to get hired in their first full-time job after college. Internships, co-ops, service learning, and volunteer experiences are all recognized by employers as bona fide ways for new professionals to gain the skills they need to become successful in the real world.
Consequently, I hope you’ll be frequent visitors to this site. I am always happy to answer any questions and I encourage all students, employers, educators, and parents to post comments to any blog posts, join our internship forum, or subscribe to our internships newsletter on an ongoing basis. With the state of the current economy, internships are seen as being even more important in helping students develop the professional connections and networking contacts they need to help them cross the bridge from college student to career professional in their chosen field of interest.
Introducing InternQube - A New Resource to Help Students Make the Most of their Internship Experience.
I’d also like to mention an excellent new resource for finding and making the most of an internship. This resource is geared towards helping students make the gigantic leap from student to employee. After many years of planning and over six months in developing; my colleague, Michael True from Messiah College, recently launched InternQube.
InternQube, an online textbook of sorts, is a multi-faceted hub of resources that is available when needed and is offered in the following formats - text, audio, video, social networking, weblinks, reflection, and group discussions and even has mobile capability with items such as the ipod touch and iphone. InternQube is a comprehensive resource designed to provide students with everything they ever wanted to know about an internship or co-op as well as learning how to make the most of any internship or co-op experiences they do.
Subscribing to InternQube provides an opportunity to participate in group discussions and a way to interact with other people who may have advice to offer or who may be going through similar circumstances. Discussions on specific topics such as ethical behavior and what to do or not do regarding an office romance can provide a heads up to some of the sticky problems that can occur over the course of an internship. There's also information available for international students on topics such as visas, graduate school, etc.
Even more importantly, the cost of this resource is very affordable at $39 for a six-month subscription. I am also very happy to say that Michael has deemed that any profits that are earned from those who purchase the product, above the costs of the development and maintaining of the website, will be used toward providing assistance to the hungry and homeless.
