Building an On-Campus Internship Program (feat. Sarah Coburn)

Career Everywhere

Sarah Coburn, Senior Associate Director for Experiential Learning and Employer Engagement at St. Lawrence University, shares how she built a successful on-campus internship program.

The on-campus internship program (OCIP) provides paid internships for students to work in various departments on campus, gaining valuable skills and experience. The internships are structured to include additional professional development time and orientation (also paid) through the career center.

In the episode, Sarah discusses:

• What the OCIP looks like and how it’s structured
• Why she built the OCIP and how valuable it is for St. Lawrence students in rural upstate New York
• How the internships are structured (e.g. what the roles look like and in what departments, who supervises, how performance is measured/monitored, etc.)
• What the additional professional development through the career center includes
• How the budget works (e.g. who pays the interns)
• How she built cross-campus partnerships with other departments and employers and got buy-in
• How she measures success
• What results and outcomes she’s seen since launching OCIP
• Her goals for OCIP in the future
• And more

Resources from the episode:

• Sarah’s LinkedIn profile
• On-campus internship program (OCIP) webpage (includes examples of roles)
• OCIP supervisor evaluation form

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