PLS & IR Internships Syllabus

PLS & IR Internships Syllabus

PLS 490 Internship
IR 490 Internship
2-6 credits

Faculty Internship Directors
Political Science: Dr. Laura Schneider
Phone: (616) 331-8988
Email: [email protected]

International Relations: Dr. Heather Tafel
Phone: (616) 331-8511
Email: [email protected]

DESCRIPTION

Political Science (PLS) and International Relations (IR) internships are applied learning activities designed to help students make connections between the theory and practice of academic study and the practical application of classroom learning in a professional environment. Internships offer the opportunity to explore career options while gaining relevant experience and professional connections. Students can pursue internships in a variety of national, state, local, or international settings with government agencies, think tanks, non-profit organizations, political campaigns, law firms, corporations, and interest groups.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

After successful completion of the course, students will be able to:
• Create relationships and professional connections that help them pursue their career goals
• Apply and develop skills such as public speaking, writing, research, financial literacy, leadership, and cultural competency
• Evaluate and apply the knowledge gained in academic courses to agencies and organizations involved with policy formulation and implementation
• Explain the challenges and opportunities of various professions in political science and international relations.

PREREQUISITES

Students must have junior standing and permission of the Internship Director. Students must meet with the Internship Director to discuss the program. Second year students with strong academic records may petition the internship director for a waiver of the junior standing requirement. 

INTERNSHIP HOURS AND COURSE CREDIT

GVSU awards academic credit in proportion to the hours of work a student-intern completes. For each credit, the student is expected to work fifty hours. A student can earn a maximum of six credits in PLS 490. No more than nine credits in PLS 399, PLS 499, and PLS 490 may be taken. Similarly, for IR majors, a maximum of six credits in IR 490 can be taken, and no more than nine credits in IR 399, IR 499, and IR 490 can be taken.

 

 

READINGS

In consultation with the Internship Director, students should choose 2-4 readings to complete during the course of the internship. The readings below debate the equity and importance of student internships. The two listed below are required readings. Students will select 1-2 additional readings specific to the nature of the internship for approval by the Internship Director. 

Schwarz, Madeline. Winter 2013. “Opportunity Costs: The True Costs of Internships.” Dissent, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/opportunity-costs-the-true-price-of-internships

Thompson, Derek. May 2012. “In Defense of Unpaid Internships.” The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/in-defense-of-unpaid-internships/257000/

 

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

All coursework should be submitted on the Blackboard website for PLS 490/IR 490. Weekly journal entries including the number of hours worked will be submitted on Blackboard using the Discussion Board. Interns will be able to view and comment on other interns’ postings. Two short papers, described below, should be submitted on Blackboard. In addition, you will be prompted to submit the four short assignments on Blackboard at regular intervals. The Final Portfolio also should  be submitted on Blackboard 

(1) Weekly Journal

The journal is a weekly log that will include a summary of activities as well as observations and brief reflections about the functioning of the office (e.g. work-supervisor relations, leadership and management practices, interactions with outside agencies, groups and constituents/clients). It is important that interns set aside regular time to record these journal entries. Weekly entries should be at least one paragraph and must include the total number of hours worked. 

(2) Learning Objectives Paper

Within two weeks of the commencement of the internship, students will submit a brief summary of their learning objectives (1.5-2 pages). Interns should focus on objectives in the following areas:

A. Professional: How do you expect this internship to help you pursue your career goals?
B. Civic: What political knowledge or civic skills (e.g. public speaking, writing, financial literacy, cultural competency leadership) do you hope to obtain through this internship?
C. Scholarly: Do you expect your internship to confirm/disconfirm what you have learned as a student of political science or international relations? 

(3) Midterm Assessment Paper

This paper should be submitted within five weeks after the beginning of the internship (1.5-2 pages). Interns should include answers to the following questions:

A. What tasks are you responsible for  at your  internship?
B. Does the internship conform to your  expectations?
C. Are there problems or concerns with the internship that should be noted at this time?

 (4) Assignments

A. Resume: Interns will integrate their internship experience into a resume that also includes their professional objective(s), educational information, and other relevant experience.

B. Organization Overview: Do some basic research into the organization where you are interning. What is the organization’s  mission, and how does it seek to fulfill that mission? What is the organization’s budget and where does its funding come from? What is the history of the organization? How do your internship responsibilities and activities fit in with the organization’s mission?

C. Informational Interview Summary: Interns will conduct at least one informational interview with an established professional in their area of interest (e.g. NGO director, attorney, chief of staff, campaign manager, or public executive). Questions may include the career motivations of the interviewee, the education and experiences that led to their position, and the aspects of the profession that they like or dislike, among other topics. In the summary, be sure to record the interviewee’s name and the date and place of the interview.

D. Reading Reflection: How have your required and selected PLS/IR 490 reading assignments affected how you think about this particular internship?

(5) Final Portfolio: 

This is due by the end of the semester or by the due date specified on the Online Agreement Form). There are three components of the Portfolio, as noted below.

A. Internship Reflection: Interns will complete a 5-7-page paper in response to a prompt devised by the Internship Director. The paper should make explicit linkages to the assigned readings and other related literature on the intern’s organization. We anticipate that some of the work completed as part of the assignments will become part of this final paper.

B. Experience Matters website: Each student will “Submit an Experience” by following the instructions at https://www.gvsu.edu/experiencematters. Note: Your submission to Experience Matters will be forwarded automatically to the Internship Director by GVSU’s Career Services.

C. Supervisor Evaluation: Two weeks prior to the end of the semester, the student and the internship Site Supervisor (as indicated on your Internship Agreement Form) will receive an email with a link to the final evaluation. It is the student’s responsibility to make sure that the supervisor receives and completes this form. If for some reason you or your supervisor does not receive the evaluation, please contact your Faculty Internship Director. The evaluation should indicate whether the student-intern has performed satisfactorily for the appropriate number of hours.

GRADES:

Internships are graded through a Credit/No Credit marking. To earn a grade of Credit, students must submit a Final Portfolio and must earn a grade of 70% or higher on all assignments. In addition to this requirement, all components of the portfolio must be submitted for the student to be qualified to earn course credit.   

Grades will be calculated as follows:

• Learning Objectives: 10%
• Midterm Assessment: 10%
• Four Assignments: 20%
• Weekly Journal Entries: 15%
• Reflection Term Paper: 30%
• Experience Matters Form:  5%
• Supervisor Evaluation: 10%

ACADEMIC AND WORKPLACE INTEGRITY

Writing is integral to thinking. It is also hard. The purpose of your writing assignments is to demonstrate your learning and communicate the process of your learning. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini are useful tools for brainstorming, improving our arguments, and polishing our writing. However, they are not substitutes for writing and thinking, and to earn academic credit for your internship, there are limits for using them. Just as you may seek assistance from your fellow students and your professors for suggestions, you may use generative AI to help improve your assignment. However, you may not use it to create your assignment or sections of your assignment. In other words, for graded assignments, all students must submit original work and not another’s efforts. No matter the type of assistance you get on your assignments, the final products must be your own. Note that this is consistent with GVSU’s Acceptable Use Policy for Public AI Solutions.

Acceptable assistance:

Knowledge Market and Writing Center consultants, your fellow students, the professor, as well as generative artificial intelligence (AI) may provide brainstorming assistance and revision suggestions. Using spell checkers, grammar checkers, and getting suggestions for rephrasing and organization are acceptable as long as your assignment retains your voice and your authorship. This means that as the author of the assignment, you should be able to answer any and all questions about the process of creating the assignment and about the content contained in your assignment. Using AI to improve your assignment requires an AI statement as well as your prompts and chatbot responses in an appendix included at the end of your assignment.

Example AI Use Statement

I used ChatGPT (OpenAI) on [dates], to generate preliminary ideas and identify grammar and punctuation errors. The final analysis and writing are my own. An appendix at the end of this assignment includes the prompts I submitted to ChatGPT, the responses I received, and the AI-generated output that informed my work.

Unacceptable assistance: 

You are not permitted to use any person or tools, including Generative AI such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, to compose entire sentences, paragraphs, paper sections, or the assignment in its entirety. You may not use an AI tool for writing an outline, a rough draft, or a final draft of an assignment. 

Here are examples of unacceptable assistance (taken from Supplemental Writing Skills at GVSU, Writing with Artificial Intelligence):

• Directly copying from an AI generator
• Generating an outline for an assignment using AI
• Replacing your voice with AI content from Grammarly or other language-enhancing programs, sentence by sentence
• Pasting a draft of your writing into AI, asking it to improve clarity, and then pasting the output to use as your own without making careful judgements about which language interferes with your voice.

Having someone or something else to complete your work and submitting that work as your own is plagiarism, and according to the GVSU Student Code is considered academic misconduct. False claims about working at an internship in a dishonest attempt to secure academic credit also will be treated as academic misconduct. 

Potential violations of academic misconduct will first be discussed in person, via Zoom, or via telephone. Depending on the outcome of that discussion, the Internship Director  may then refer the case to the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution (OSCCR) with a recommendation for corrective action. Violations of academic misconduct may result in a 0 on the assignment in question, may require a re-submission, and/or may result in a failing grade for the course.

Students who are dismissed from their internship position before the semester course withdrawal deadline must withdraw from the PLS/IR 490 course or risk earning No Credit (NC) for their internship. Dismissals after the withdrawal deadline will result in the student earning NC unless the on-site Internship Supervisor confirms that the student completed the required hours of work and the student has submitted all the required assignments with the exception of the journal entries. In any case, the Internship Director reserves the right to discuss the circumstances of any dismissal with the student’s on-site Internship Supervisor and may make a referral to the OSCCR if there is sufficient evidence of a university policy violation as defined in the Student Code.