Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to describe the organization, management, and outcomes of an internship program in Animal Sciences. The goals of the internship experience are to provide an experiential learning opportunity for students to apply the concepts, knowledge, and skills gained during their undergraduate education to real world situations as they connect theory with practice. The internship experience provides students an opportunity to enhance written and oral communication skills, improve critical thinking skills, and promote awareness of community and societal issues while increasing student marketability for employment. The internship program is administered online through a course management system. The majority of internships were completed during summer quarter by students of senior rank. Eighty-four percent of internships were local and less than 6% of students completed more than a single internship for academic credit, with students completing multiple internships participating in longer internship experiences (P < 0.001). Veterinary internships represented 21.3% of
all experiences, followed by food animal production (20.0%), and research (18.3%). Within animal industries, dairy cattle internships dominated (40.8% of total food animal production internships). According to graduate surveys, 94% of survey respondents rated the internship as valuable and 28.6% of respondents were offered full-time employment by the internship organization (P < 0.001).
Keywords
animal science internships, connect theory with practice, real world situations
 Peffer_NACTA_June_2012.pdf | [ ] | 271 kB |
