Program Expansion
By focusing on the following areas, you can position your student internship program (SIP) for more projects and funders, which are key to making the program strong.
- Impressing Sponsors
- Seeking Project Continuation
- Recruiting Your Best Interns
- Staying Connected
- Documenting Program Work
This section also includes some ideas for how to share what you and your student interns learn with others "Outside the Campus Community."
Impressing Sponsors
In order to grow your SIP from one intern and one year to multiple interns over multiple years, you need to succeed in expanding your base of sponsors. There are a number of things that can make this possible:
- Provide impressive results to sponsors.
- Communicate effectively at all times with sponsors and be sure to do so throughout the entire internship process.
- Have the interns give inspiring public presentations.
- Generate positive media highlighting the leadership of the sponsoring departments in working with students.
- Make sponsoring an internship an enjoyable experience for departments so they will want to participate again.
Seeking Project Continuation
If midway through an internship the project seems to be capturing the interest and imagination of the sponsoring department, look for opportunities to extend it. Propose this option to the intern and the sponsor early enough for both to give it some thought. If you get the slightest amount of encouragement, make every effort to fully develop an expanded project concept. Somebody needs to actively facilitate the approval of the extension. That somebody probably needs to be you. Offer to continue assisting in the management and administration of the extended internship.
Recruiting Your Best Interns
As with a green living program, much of the value of a SIP lies in the experiences and knowledge gained by a temporary workforce. If your SIP is part of a larger campus-greening organization, try to keep your best interns on staff. An internship is the best interview process in the world. Because getting the best talent into your green campus outfit is essential to its success, use the internship program as a recruitment tool.
Staying Connected
Maintain ties with good interns that move on to other positions. You never know what kind of ongoing role they may end up being able to take.
Documenting Program Work
Formal presentations of final reports, with prospective sponsors invited, are usually the most useful documents. Internships can easily generate excessive documentation that will never be read by others. In order to focus and streamline documentation efforts, it is very helpful to steer these efforts towards a final presentation product. Supplementary documentation is fine as long as it has clear relevance.
Outside the Campus Community
Anyone who tries to transform long-established practices, such as those involved in operating a college or university campus, is doing something innovative and challenging. Campus sustainability advocates need all the support they can get in their efforts. By sharing what you have learned while breaking ground at your institution, you can provide the knowledge and inspiration that may help other advocates be more successful on their campuses.
One of the most challenging components of running an effective SIP is securing financial support for projects. At the same time, the process of looking for and securing funding is an integral part of a successful SIP because it provides the impetus and opportunity to reach out to your community. It is the linkages you make with local, regional and national organizations that will result in your SIP influencing the world beyond your college or university campus. Corporate, nonprofit, private and government organizations are all potential sponsors. By becoming involved with a SIP, they are likely to become more invested in sustainable thinking.
University groups that sponsor an internship project might remain interested in the topic and become involved in groups outside the college or university to share ideas about it.
Internship advisory groups often include members who are not located on campus. Information generated during the internship is necessarily shared with these individuals, and this knowledge might spark sustainable action at their home organizations.
Internship duties sometimes involve investigating the cost of various services or products that have a sustainable application. Because institutions of higher education have considerable spending power and market influence, procurement guidelines or contracted work may help encourage the development of environmentally friendly industries or product lines.