Insights From Efforts to Promote Internships at the System Level

• In Event: 35.041 - What Do We Know About College Internships? Insights From Researchers and Practitioners on Challenges, Opportunities, and Implications for Equity

Abstract

Objectives and perspectives
Nancy O’Neill is the Associate Director of the William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation at the University System of Maryland. Ms. O'Neill currently leads a project on taking high-impact practices (including internships) to scale that involves four USM institutions and helps to lead the Kirwan Center’s system-wide digital badging initiative. Prior to being at USM, she served as the Director of the Center for Excellence in Learning, Teaching, and Technology at the University of Baltimore from 2012 to 2016.

In this symposium, Nancy O’Neill will discuss USM’s recent efforts to take internships and other high-impact practices to scale within and across four institutions. This work is part of a larger national effort among state systems to increase access to high-quality practices among students, particularly those historically under-represented in higher education. In undertaking this work, practitioners face an inter-related set of challenges – variation in quality; lack of documentation at the student record level; and institutional cultures that treat many high-impact practices such as internships as “boutique” offerings. O’Neill will outline these challenges and talk about some of the emerging strategies to address them.

Author

• Nancy ONeill, University of Baltimore