Why Intern?

The old adage that you learn best by doing has not gone out of style. Internships provide essential, hands-on experiences for students at every phase of their educational program. They also provide important support for researchers managing complex, work intensive projects.

Whether you intern with an individual faculty member or serve a whole research center, internships develop connections and references that will prove invaluable learning, regardless of your next steps. To conduct research requires building relationships with both the communities you study and with funding agencies that sponsor your work. This relationship-building takes time and practice. Internships allow you to observe how researchers across different departments and centers have developed and sustained their niches and continually expand their reach.

College of Education Internships are unique depending on the specific needs of the research project and faculty member.  For example,  some interns will participate in the following types of research experiences:

• Grant proposal design and development
• Research design and planning
• Development of Institutional Review Board (Human Subjects) protocol application and reviews
• Qualitative and quantitative data collection: interviews, focus groups, surveys, assessments, etc.
• Research methodology
• Assessment development and validity and reliability studies
• Data analysis and reporting
• Peer reviewed or other professional publications

Across all these internship experiences, you will gain important professional knowledge  and skills and interact with cutting edge educational researchers.