Internships

For instance, sometimes students imagine working with children and then discover that children really annoy them. Conversely, some students imagine that research is boring and then fall in love with research as a result of an internship. We encourage you to think about your current career goals and to try to find an internship that might give you a taste of what that work would be like

Please click on the video below to learn more about the internship process in Psychology or HDFS.

If you require closed captioning, please be sure to toggle the Closed Caption option to “on”

Internship Tips

1. Apply to various internships (we suggest 3-4 to start) by sending a tailored cover letter and attaching your resume.
2. In your cover letter, make sure to state that you are looking for an undergraduate internship that would provide about 10 hours/week of psychology-related experience and that would offer regular supervision from an experienced person who can meet with you on a weekly basis. (There is no degree requirement for undergraduate internship supervisors.) Here is a helpful video on writing a cover letter for an internship https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4mxzmA-Y5M
3. If you do not hear back from the organizations after a week or so, follow up with another email to them, and also apply to 2-3 more sites.

What does the internship class look like?

Whether you take PSY 3980 or PSY 4650, there are some academic requirements for the course. This course must be taken alongside your internship. Students are asked to meet 2-3 times during the semester. Toward the end of the semester, our meeting will be devoted to sharing professional presentations of your internship experiences. In addition to meetings, through Canvas you will 1) file regular journals of your experiences; 2) create a literature review on a topic related to your internship; 3) have occasional readings that you will respond to; and 4) be encouraged to delve deeper into learning about the organization you are working with. Sometime midterm, your faculty supervisor will conduct a site visit to check in on you and your supervisor to see how you are progressing on the goals you set at the beginning of the semester. And, finally, you and your site supervisor will evaluate your internship experience at the end of semester. Again, you should plan your schedule to include the class meetings and set aside time to complete the academic assignments.

Contact

You can reach Dr. Jovan Hernandez at [email protected] to share your interest in being part of the internship class or to ask any questions you may have.