Closing the loop on the internship experience with a new pre-internship course

Students majoring in horticulture at Kansas State University are required to complete an internship, as well as written and oral reports about the experience, as a component of their degree program. However, the quality of experiences and student preparedness for these internships varies broadly. During the Fall 2001 semester, the department created and offered a new one credit-hour course, Pre-Internship in Horticulture, to introduce the internship program to our underclassmen in an effort to prepare them early for getting the most out of their eventual internship experiences. The first half of the course included programs on topics such as: how to plan for and find a rewarding internship; departmental requirements for completing an internship; guest lectures from industry leaders on what employers are seeking; appreciating the Hispanic culture; cover letter and resume preparation; and how to create and deliver a quality oral presentation using digital visual aids. A comparison of pre- and end-course evaluation data indicated that students' perceptions and understanding of internships and the range of opportunities in the industry were changed as a result of taking the pre-internship class, but not as much as instructors had hoped. In the second half, students in the pre-internship class actively participated as the audience for the more than 50 presentations conducted by the previous year's interns. This provided underclassmen with exposure to the variety and quality of internship opportunities available, as well as real-world information about what to expect from careers in horticultural industries. Pre-internship students were required to critically evaluate the presentations, and these peer evaluation results were analyzed and summarized before return to the upperclassmen presenters.