Internships

Students participating in internships will have two supervisors-- one at work, one at the university. The supervisory relationship at work is not directly the business of anyone at the university, although concerns and problems should be discussed with your faculty sponsor. This document is about the academic side of the internship.

On the academic side, an internship should provide a learning situation. Toward that end the following are required:

· Regular scheduled contact, so that you and your faculty sponsor may trade written material and discuss issues surrounding the internship. Weekly contact via email is the norm.

· An interpretive journal. At the start this should include a job description, descriptions of your activities and any concern you have about them. The journal will evolve as your faculty sponsor asks questions in response to your journal, and assigns readings to incorporate into your entries. This can be a part of the weekly email contact.

· A product, such as an analytical paper attached to some manual or newsletter produced at work. As internships differ, you will have to discuss the specific content of an appropriate product for your internship.

Please write a one-page proposal for your internship. Be sure it addresses each of the points above, and have it approved by a faculty sponsor. Your proposal will have a beginning bibliography appropriate to your internship activities.

Some students may wish to have an internship fulfill the requirement for Senior Seminar, POLS 499, as mentioned in the Political Science section of the University catalog. Here are the requirements for this option:

o Your one-page proposal will explicitly state that you intend to use the internship in lieu of POLS 499.

o One of the core goals of the Senior Seminar is to enable students to choose among and use different perspectives in political science. Toward that end a paper is required in the seminar. In this paper the student discusses the methodological and conceptual choices in their analysis. The paper is also precise in stating the research hypothesis, findings, and so on. Such a paper needs to be written in conjunction with an internship in lieu of POLS 499.

o The process of writing such a paper is complicated, and each step needs review by your faculty sponsor. The regular contact of the internship in lieu of POLS 499 will include progress toward defining and writing the paper. Please follow the following schedule:

• Topic Declaration--brief and extended versions, due second and third week of semester
• Development of Theory and Methods Section--completed fifth week of semester
• Data Collection--report progress eighth week of semester
• Complete Paper--two weeks before end of semester
• If your internship does not conform to the University academic calendar, your proposal must include a revised timetable that includes these steps.

There are many books that convey the different perspectives and methods of political science. Among them are Bernard Susser's Approaches to the Study of Politics (Macmillan, 1992), Ada Finifter, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (APSA, 1983); ), Ada Finifter, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline II (APSA, 1993). Important methodological issues are discussed in Kenneth Hoover's The Elements of Social Scientific Thinking (St Martin's, several editions); Janet Johnson & Richard Joslyn, Political Science Research Methods (CQ Press, several editions); Gary King, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry (Princeton, 1994); and Eugene J. Meehan, Reasoned Argument in Social Science (Greenwood, 1981). You are unlikely to need all of these, and it is possible you will use none of them.