Building Bridges:

The Importance of Internships



 
A Literary Review of what Scholars are Saying About
the Importance of Internships to Students, Communities, and Democracy


Introduction

    I never really think about how well endowed St. Olaf College is until I bring visitors on a tour of campus.  Walking friends, family, or prospective students through the new Buntrock Commons, Dittman Center for the Arts or the Tostrud Center, I can't help but swagger just a little as I show off all that we've been blessed with as a student body and as an institution. There are other times though, when this wealth of facilities and equipment leaves me feeling somewhat guilty.  I feel guilty at the fact that with practically unlimited access to some of the most advanced media equipment I will ever see, workshops with more tools than I'll ever own, and a cadre of teachers to train me in their use, I have done little of real import with the infrastructure of St. Olaf College.  Considering the amount of resources we have at our disposal here at St. Olaf, I would have to estimate that we use barely more than half of them to their full potential.
    This disparity between our true capacity and our actual use of campus resources came to mind often as I began to think about working on a collaborative project focusing on environmental issues in the Northfield area.   Listening to the speakers from different environmental organizations and agencies who came to discuss environmental issues with us in class, I heard the message reiterated time and time again that in the world of environmental decision making and advocacy, as the authors of Making Collaboration Work put it, "It takes resources - money, equipment, humanpower - to get things done" (Wondolleck and Yaffee 198).   I realized that while we had these things in spades at St. Olaf, the people in town who were working in the reality of the environmental debate were less well off.   I decided therefore, that my project would seek to "build a bridge" between the environmental decision making community in Northfield/Rice County and St. Olaf College thereby opening our resources somewhat to those who could use them most.
    I followed this line of thought to the idea of internships.   Internships seemed to me to be the best way to both offer the resources of St. Olaf to the greater community, while at the same time gaining experiential opportunities for Environmental Studies students.  In this way, certain needs of both groups were met.   As I ventured further into the issue, I discovered that this sort of connection was one that had not been officially pursued as of yet.  I decided that this was fertile ground for a collaborative relationship.
    Towards these ends I set out to create a website-database of possible local internships that St. Olaf Students could refer to when they began to look into their experiential component in Environmental Studies.   The database would also be a means to establishing long-term ties with the organizations that chose to be represented on it, in that they would not have to re-advertise for interns every year.  St. Olaf students would always be aware of the different groups' presence via a link to this website on the Environmental Studies website and/or their advisor's knowledge of the website's existence.   However before I could begin this project I had to ensure that internships were truly as beneficial a resource as they seemed in my mind. Therefore I looked into the current scholarly work on internships and service-learning to see what benefits had been attributed to this different way of learning.   The following literary reviews explain what I found in my research and how the information helped inform my project.
            
Works Cited
Wondolleck, Julia M. and Steven L. Yaffee, eds.  Making Collaboration Work: Lessons from Innovation in Natural Resources Management. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000.



  • Bailis, Lawrence N., ed. Taking Service-Learning to the Next Level: Emerging Lessons from the National Community Development Program. NCDP (National Community Development Project) Workbook: National Society for Experiential Education (NSEE),Feb. 2000. 1-26.
"Taking Service Learning to the Next Level: Emerging Lessons from the National Community Development Program" is a workbook explaining the National Society for Experiential Education's (NSEE) efforts to find a new sort of service-learning.  They wanted to end the trend of "instrumental service-learning" that centered only around one project or only on the needs of a few people.   What they sought to do instead was to create lasting relationships between service-learning groups and their providers that focus on long term projects.  To this end they formed the hypothesis that "we can take service learning to the next level by taking relationships to the next level" (Bailis 5), and moved to test this idea in three different cases.    They formed the National Community Development Program (NCDP) to run the project and moved to see what would happen if they facilitated the development of long-term, "sustainable relationships" in service-learning between three different universities and their respective host communities.  What they found was encouraging.

They found that while at first, in most cases, the process was lengthy and hard, the "sustainable relationships" all eventually yielded "solid, high quality service-learning projects" (Bailis 9).  The communities gained from the free service and increased contact with the universities, while the universities received both the good feeling and good P.R. that goes along with being involved in their communities.  This all came along with the benefits of the actual experience the students received in their service-learning.  

Three years after the beginning of the experiment the relationships/ service-learning projects were still going strong.  In the eyes of the NSEE and the communities involved the experiment was a success.  As a result they extended the life of the NCDP and wrote this workbook to guide other groups in the development of "sustainable relationships" in service-learning.  

The workbook ends with a list of pointers regarding this process which  I have found quite valuable in my work on this project.   They emphasize that
  • The process is worth it, no matter how hard, all of those involved insisted that it will eventually pay off.
  • The players must be very flexible.  The three different groups of universities and communities came to their successes in very different ways.   In fact, the only common element they all shared was to...
  • Stress good interpersonal relationships.  If friendship and trust is not developed the projects will fail.
  • Build on existing foundations.  It is better to build on a tenuous relationship with the other player than having to start from nothing.
  • Stress equality and respect for one another's agendas.
  • Balance need for careful planning with the urgency you might feel for action (Bailis 19).
In the building of my project I endeavored to keep these pieces of advice in mind and would suggest them to anyone else looking into the development of internship relationships.  While my process was relatively painless, remaining flexible no doubt allowed it to be thus.  While I did enter the project with a certain picture in my mind of what its results would be, I never let that idea restrict my ability to take advice, accept failures and restructure my project accordingly.  I also found that it was easier to work with organizations that had at least some experience with St. Olaf (Justin Watkins of the Cannon River Watershed Project [CRWP] is an alumni, Patrick Ganey, president of CRWP, is familiar with a number of St. Olaf faculty, and Bruce Anderson actually works in our Library).   My attempts to contact individuals in governmental organizations who had little contact with the school were far less successful.  Yet I do hope our work with the organizations that have posted will attract other organizations to the website that have less connection to St. Olaf.  Lastly, the emphasis on  good interpersonal relationships is key.  At all times I worked to show how excited St. Olaf was to be able to become more proactively involved in  the Northfield community and I attempted to allow the ideas and opinions of the organizations to be fully expressed on their section of the website without letting my own ideas color them incorrectly.

Ultimately, this workbook gave me hope that my desire to create long term relationships between the Northfield/Rice County Community and the College would be an effective and beneficial means to fulfilling the mission of our class: "Making Collaboration Work."    



  • Elshtain, Jean B. "The Decline of the Democratic faith."  Experiencing Citizenship: Concepts and Models for Service Learning in Political Science.  Eds. William E. Hudson, Richard M. Battistoni. Wash., D.C.: American Association for Higher Education, 1997, (9-15).  
In "The Decline of the Democratic Faith" Elshtain outlines a general concern that we are currently experiencing a "crisis in 'social capital formation'" (Elshtain 9).  As a result she sees a burgeoning tide of mistrust, cynicism and pessimism rising in the youth of America and a corresponding drop in the amount of civic responsibility felt by the same group.  In her eyes, De Tocqueville's warning that "only small scale civic bodies would enable citizens to cultivate democratic virtues and to play an active role in the democratic community" is proving true as fewer and fewer people are getting involved in local politics and more and more are getting involved in apathy (Elshtain 10).   A key answer she sees to this problem is an increased involvement for younger people in service learning.  

Elshtain claims there are three key benefits in this return to service.  Renewed involvement provides the perfect environment for the development of a good democratic disposition, it gets the student in touch with these "small scale civic bodies" that were the soul of our nation in De Tocqueville's time, and it brings together groups that have not traditionally worked together: the young and the old, people of different ethnic backgrounds, the rich and the poor etc."

At a school where it is a battle just getting students to vote, Elshtain's comments on the democratic implications of internships become crucial.  St. Olaf is a school full of  countless driven and intelligent students who, if they worked at it, could make a great difference in the local political scene. However this possibility is often disabled by students preoccupation with their academics.  Internships for academic credit provide a great way to remedy this situation.  Not only is the student called to work on real world issues that often have political implications, they are also driven to do it well as a result of its academic implications.  One good friend of mine barely ever thought about politics until her internship at WomanSafe Center in Faribault, afterwards the personal connections she made there called her to be a staunch political advocate. She wrote letters, organized fundraising events, and embraced her civic responsibility by advocating selflessly for resources for battered and abused women.  These local internships will create the same opportunity for students in the Environmental Studies department.



  • Jacobson, Susan K. "Graduate Education in Conservation Biology." Conservation Biology. 4.4 (Dec. 1990): 431-440.
In this article Susan K. Jacobson gives a brief overview of the history of Conservation Biology as an academic institution and the hurdles it has and is facing.  She argues that,
The growing urgency of training individuals to protect, maintain, and restore the planet's biological diversity is challenging academic institutions to overcome narrow disciplinary perspectives (Jacobson 431)

Historically Conservation Biology was a science mainly concerned with game management, carried out principally by organizations like the Wildlife Society.  As time progressed though and our biological understanding of environmental problems grew, biologists began to dominate the field.  People's faith in the hard sciences waned somewhat though, and criticism began to mount against the positivist mindset dominating Conservation Biology.   Many claimed that the hard Biologists "render the field too pure and diminish its practicality" (Jacobsen 432).   This lead to a new incarnation of the field in recent decades.

According to Jacobson, beginning with the comment of Lovejoy in the 1980 issue of Conservation Biology that "Conservation Biology is inextricably interwoven with sociology and economics," individuals throughout the discipline began to advocate for more interdisciplinary experience to get their students more 'in touch with the real world' (Jacobson 432).   These beliefs also spread beyond the academic realm to be expressed by leading organizations in the field.   Organizations like the World Wildlife Fund commented that their ideal conservation biologist would have 

(1) Cross disciplinary breadth as well as disciplinary depth (2) field experience (3) language and communications skills; and (4) leadership skills; especially a mix of diplomacy and humility (Jacobson 433).
Creating such a diversely educated student is more easily said than done though.  Jacobson quotes an anonymous wit describing the loose connections between faculty members of different departments as, "a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking" (Jacobson 434). Jacobson suggests internships as one of the key mechanisms to  pull together departments as students begin to require multidisciplinary training to be prepared for internships.  This crossover will conveniently also provide students with the sorts of experience that will make them attractive to the aforementioned sorts of employers.

While, in my opinion, St. Olaf has already done a great job of fostering an interdisciplinary environment, especially in the Environmental Studies department, Jacobson's argument still holds a great amount of relevancy for this school.   No matter how many cross curriculum classes an individual might take, there are few experiences in the classroom that can pull together a student's combined scholastic experience in a real world situation like an internship.  I stress this point knowing that the Environmental Studies department does require an experiential component and that I might seem to be preaching to the choir.  This is not the case though, in that "experiential component" can be interpreted and fulfilled in many ways as in the case of abroad trips or field classes.  I believe that Jacobson's article provides one of the main arguments for why internships should be held above some of these other "experiential" learning situations.



  • Jacobson, Susan K.  "Training Idiot Savants: The Lack of Human Dimensions in Conservation Biology."  Conservation Biology.  12.2 (Apr. 1998): 263-267.
In "Training Idiot Savants: The Lack of Human Dimensions in Conservation Biology" Jacobson reiterates her earlier claim that conservation biologists are being under-trained due to a lack of interdisciplinary cross-over in academic departments.  In this article though, she focuses far more closely on the fact that conservation biologists need more training in the human aspects of environmental problems.   She stresses that in reality,
Most wildlife problems start out as biological problems but eventually become people problems...people are in the beginning, middle, and end of all management issues.  Recognition of this central role will improve our ability to conserve nature (Jacobson 263).
When environmental studies students learn about the procedures, policies and ideas of their discipline they do so in a highly abstract context. This is a problem because unlike the physicist who will interact more often with other physicists or her own equipment, the conservation biologist must deal with the emotions, the philosophies, and the economics of other people with far different educational backgrounds than their own.  Students  unprepared for these types interactions can often function in ways highly inimical to the greater cause of living well in the environment.  They assume, accuse, and are insensitive towards those in fields with more use-based philosophies than their own, therein preempting any chance for collaborative solutions to wicked problems.  (Pete Streit's work in "An Introduction to Agriculture from the Farmer's Perspectives" illustrates this problem well.)  

To properly train environmental studies majors then, they must be introduced to the realm of human relations.  While we do attempt to involve human aspects in our studies at this point, stories about human interactions from a  teacher or a book pale in comparison to actually working with those whom your ideas will ultimately effect, the farmer, the grass roots organizer, or the homeowner.  In essence, Jacobsen contends that we must re-contextualize our learning style, so as to place it as close in proximity to these people as possible.  Internships are one of the best ways to accomplish this end of creating more empathetic, well rounded students.
 



  • Mattingly, Hayden T.  "Seeking Balance in Higher Education."  Conservation Biology.  11.5 (Oct. 1997): 1049-1052.
Hayden Mattingly argues in "Seeking Balance in Higher Education" that the institutions of higher education in the United States have become too rigid in their styles of teaching.   As a graduate student nearing graduation, Mattingly feels that he has spent "too much time in the mental realm, virtually ignoring the physical and spiritual side components...imbalance and stress followed" (Mattingly 1049).  His argument, then, is for an increasing inclusion of physically and spiritually enriching teaching styles in education.

As was noted in Jacobson though, there is resistance to changing the way teaching is done on the higher education level.  Lecture style teaching has been the norm seemingly forever, and therefore altering styles is no easy task.   He notes that professors are often reluctant to yield the academic control and status held in the lecturing format to more communal styles of education like service-learning.  Mattingly also aptly notes that that "The reality of college funding crunches must be creatively encountered" (Mattingly 1051).   The point is then appropriately made that internships are one possible solution to multitude of problems related to the certain professor's recalcitrance to change and funding issues.

As the author states,

Experiential internships and capstone courses are two of the most important components of a balanced undergraduate program.  Internships combine a scholastic theory with hands-on experience, thereby immersing the students in a variety of learning modes.  Students often come away from internships with an entirely new worldview (Mattingly 1051)
As a college that claims in its Mission Statement to be one that "fosters the development of the whole person in mind, body and spirit" the students and staff here at Olaf should ensure that we are heeding Mattingly's advice (College Mission  Statement http://www.stolaf.edu /services/iso/mission.html).  It seems that often Students and staff place more emphasis on the importance of the capstone course (which is justified to a point, it is an incredible course) while internships are given short shrift.  If we are serious about developing the body and spirit along with the mind, we must look further than the climbing wall and chapel, to emphasize the bodily and spiritual experiences to be had in Northfield as we work side by side with the people laboring amidst the environmental issues we only study.  
 





  • Singer, Jefferson A., et al.  "Personal Identity and Civic Responsibility: 'Rising to the Occasion' Narratives and Generativity in Community Action Student Interns."   Journal of Social Issues. 58.3 (Fall 2002): 535-557.
Singer outlines a research project that sought to discover the difference in experience between experiential learning situations in travel/abroad situations and service-learning projects within the service-learner's home community.  What they found was that the community-based internships tended to fulfill "a major goal of the service-learning movement (Eyler & Giles, 1999)--the integration of personal growth and direct community involvement" (Singer 538). Students that "had selected a community focus for their academic work and then were placed in settings in which meaningful community work is conducted would be more likely to link the "personal" and the "civic" aspects of their sense of identity" (Singer 538).   Not only then was this a great experience for both the town and students, it was also a victory of the democratic ideal.

To gain a more concrete measure of the amount of personal identification and civic responsibility the students were feeling, the leaders of the study asked the students to gauge their "generativity."  "Generativity" was described as "the stage in middle adulthood in which individuals begin to look beyond their own preoccupation with building a personal identity and turn to consideration of the legacy they will leave for future generations" (Singer 542).   Sure enough generativity ratings were much higher for individuals working within their own communities.  
This article proved, for me, the importance of attempting to carry out internships within one's local community.  Too often, students believe they must go abroad, to a distant city or the capitol to gain an authentic internship experience.  This has the result of creating a minor personal divide between student and subject. Working on distant issues that do not affect the participants home allows them to put an emotional wall between themselves and their work.  When the student works on local issues they continue to be confronted with the implications of their service project long after their experience has ended.



Conclusion
   
    Upon finishing my research I felt that the scholars I looked to for support had affirmed my belief that internships were one of the best ways to bring Northfield and St. Olaf together in a collaborative relationship.  The claims I had hoped to make, namely that internships were incredibly valuable for the development of Environmental Studies students and that they were beneficial for communities, seemed to be legitimate.  According to the authors, internships helped students to broaden their academic horizons, enriching them in spirit and body, giving them the tools to work in a field were human relations are of paramount importance, and developing in them sorely needed democratic ideals.  At the same time internships also were cited as providing a boon for many different communities in their capacity to improve departmental curriculum, their ability to alleviate budget crunches both in local organizations and colleges, and in their ability to infuse communities with a number of citizens newly invigorated by a strong sense of civic responsibility.      
     With the knowledge that I was providing a truly valuable resource then, I proceeded with my project.   The website you find before you is the result of that process.  My hopes for this website are numerous.  Firstly, I hope this database is heavily utilized and will be advertising it to that end by email and public presentation to as many possible interns and internship providers as is feasible. Secondly, I hope that this use will result in stronger, long-term relationships between our institution and the environmental community of Northfield/Rice County.   To accomplish this, Professor Breen has agreed to help in the long-term maintenance of the site.  Third, and last, I hope that all of my efforts have the general result of a full utilization of the true potential of both the  Northfield/Rice County community and St. Olaf College.


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