Abstract
This article considers how professional writing courses can prepare students in various disciplines for the workforce. Specifically, I argue for Writing in the Disciplines (WID) internships where students learn to write documents relevant for their careers while participating in practical work experiences. In the WID internships I describe, instructors collaborate with coordinators across campus to establish writing-intensive internships that focus on the needs of students and the community partner. This article illustrates the collaborative endeavors of three internships, highlighting the challenges and lessons learned from WID internships.
Keywords
Professional writing curricula have traditionally focused on helping students understand the conventions of workplace writing. However, these conventions are often broadly conceived with little disciplinary context. In other words, these courses often do not teach students to write within their specific fields, but instead focus only on the most common writing conventions and documents for an abstractly defined workforce. One way to promote writing in context is to collaborate with other instructors across the disciplines, pairing professional writing instructors with instructors within the students’ majors. This practice is fairly common and often takes the form of developing collaborative curricula, facilitating linked classes, or designing team-taught courses. Other more highly structured endeavors include partnering with writing-in-the-disciplines (WID) programs. In fact, in a2007special edition of theJournal of Business and Technical Communication, Ann Blakeslee, the guest editor, suggested that approaches to WID have grown considerably across various institutions. Indeed,Mackiewicz (2012)reported success when partnering professional writing with WID to support and engage students, describing a business and technical communication course that adopted writing initiatives “in order to help students understand the course content and disciplinary discourse practices” (p. 231). Other scholars such asCarter, Ferzli, and Wiebe (2007)suggested that situated learning activities where students learn to write disciplinary discourse in a disciplinary setting provide more than an opportunity to learn to write in context; they claim that these practices allow for socialization into a field where students learn to behave as members of their disciplinary community, speaking and writing like community members.
However,Carter et al. (2007)also questioned whether students can become socialized through genre-based writing activities that occur inside the academic classroom. The authors noted a fundamental difference between an academic setting and a professional one, and they encouraged educators to continue to search for ways to help “students grow as participants in the ways of knowing their disciplines” (Carter et al., 2007, p. 299). In this article, I tackle their challenge, reconsidering how we can prepare students for actual socialization in various fields beyond academia. Specifically, I suggest that professional writing programs provide outreach to other disciplines, offering assistance to students who want to incorporate more writing into their traditional internships and to the coordinators who commonly structure internship opportunities. In this article, I outline how to provide such internships and how to work with internship coordinators and advisors across campus in order to implement what I call WID internships. In the internships I propose, students write professional documents and participate in work experiences practical for their majors and, subsequently, their chosen careers. As I will illustrate, these internships can prepare students to meet the writing demands of the workforce while encouraging important collaborations between professional writing and other programs across campus.
This article examines the design of three WID internships and offers both theoretical and practical advice for collaborating with nonprofit organizations and internship coordinators across the disciplines to create experiences that are beneficial for both the students and the service provider. In the sections that follow, I describe WID internships that focus on the students’ needs, considering the skills they seek to learn while also respecting the needs of the nonprofits. I first describe two courses that were linked together: an introductory professional and technical writing course paired with an internship practicum (the internship practicum offered students a structured class environment while they simultaneously participated in field experience as interns). Linked courses are often taught sequentially over two semesters, and they can either be paired in theme or in an effort to continue promotion of learning outcomes and a sense of community among a cohort of students. The first course I taught in the sequence—the introductory professional and technical writing course—required students to work with nonprofits before taking the internship practicum—the second course in the linked sequence—and stepping into the intern role. I then detail how I collaborated with other faculty across campus to establish relevant internships for interdisciplinary students that also included a writing focus. To illustrate student learning, I provide the interns’ reactions to the internship as evidenced in their final reflections. I include follow-up interviews with two of the interns who are now in professional positions where they are writing on a daily basis; these interviews allow the former interns to further reflect on their academic experiences now that they are successful members of the workforce. Finally, I discuss the challenges and lessons learned when developing WID internships.
Literature Review
Russell’s (2007)review of literature illustrated that professional writing and technical communication programs have “always already” (p. 248) been doing the work of WID, as teachers have collaborated and continue to collaborate with other faculty members across campus to structure curriculum, offering linked or team-taught courses where students can be further immersed in writing within their discipline.Wiese and Sherman (2011)claimed that these collaborative opportunities open up space for “interdisciplinary learning,” where students learn to more adequately solve complex problems and answer questions through the “integration of and application of knowledge from different disciplines” (p. 43).Wiese and Sherman (2011)suggested that the joining of disciplines can help “overcome the fragmentation and compartmentalization of knowledge, and thus better prepare students to function in a world that is increasingly dynamic, complex, and interconnected” (p. 43). Not only can these partnerships help prepare students for an evolving workforce, but they can also help students become more engaged in the writing that occurs within their disciplines. According toDeane and O’Neill (2011), “students are likely to be most engaged by discipline-relevant teaching rather than generic instruction about academic writing that is at times divorced from their degree programmes” (p. 4). Furthermore, asRussell (2007)noted, writing that occurs in the disciplines “can be a powerful pedagogical tool for improving learning, a tool of thinking, of reflecting, of constructing knowledge and know-how in a field” (p. 253). Thus, these writing collaborations that occur across disciplines have the potential to improve students’ writing skills, prepare them for an ever-changing workforce, and extend knowledge within a chosen field.
Carter et al. (2007)stressed the importance of writing as a way to construct knowledge in a chosen discipline, suggesting that newcomers to communities of practice (i.e., disciplines) become actual members by engaging in the writing that commonly occurs within that community. The authors interviewed students who created lab reports in a classroom setting, determining that writing these genres helped these students learn to think and write like scientists. However, scholars of situated learning theory such asLave and Wenger (1991)critiqued traditional academic practices, indicating the critical role that socialization plays in community membership. They argue for the apprenticeship, asserting that an academic setting can only provide “legitimate peripheral participation,” or participation in low-risk tasks and activities that will further the goals of the community (i.e., service-learning projects). On the other hand, asLave and Wenger (1991)discussed, an apprenticeship allows newcomers to a community of practice to learn from longstanding community members. Learning, as it occurs in the apprenticeship, is mediated by the differences in perspectives among the coparticipants in the community, as students participate in “negotiation, strategy, and unpredictable aspects of action” that often occur in the workplace (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 16). Newcomers move from participation on the periphery to full participation by becoming immersed in the sociocultural practices of a community (Lave & Wenger, 1991).
In a presentation at the Conference on College Composition and Communication,Russell (1998)problematized the apprenticeship model, arguing that the position encourages a dyadic model where the apprentice learns from the master. Instead, workers must learn to communicate with people in various fields and to write within a range of genres. Similarly,Henry (2013)asserted that 21st-century professional and technical communicators will need to learn how to navigate the culture of their community of practice—to become “cultural analysts” who can collaborate with multiple individuals, learn from their peers, and manage differing personalities and expertise that others may bring to a project. According toHenry (2013), those who are successful not only observe but also participate in the culture of the organization, learning about their colleagues and their behaviors, the organization’s primary mission, how deadlines are established, and the organization’s overall cultural values, including how the cultural members collaborate and communicate on a daily basis.Zemliansky (2010)maintained that professional writers will need to learn to collaborate with others throughout the process of writing, maintaining flexibility, and considering revisions when suggested.
The collaborative and diverse nature of the workforce insists that we heedRussell’s (1998)call for expansion of apprenticeship metaphors (either those used in the classroom or within internships) to include flexibility, reflectivity, and critique, “not simply an uncritical socialization into a single social practice” (para. 11).Cordeiro and Sloan (1996)noted that critical reflection within structured internship experiences promotes transfer of skills to later experiences; more important, they suggested that an internship as a type of apprenticeship offers students opportunities for full participation in a community of practice, positing that interns “learntotalk” like members of their communities of practice instead of “learningfrom” them (p. 7). With the concepts of flexibility, reflection, and critique in mind, educators must search for experiences that prompt students to participate in collaborative writing projects within a community of practice and to reflect on these interactions.
To this end, I suggest educators develop professional writing internships within the context of a student’s chosen discipline, where the intern has the opportunity to work with and interact with community members, to write in different genres relevant for their careers, and to reflect on and critique their experiences. Specifically, I propose WID internships where directors of professional writing programs collaborate with coordinators across the disciplines to offer internships that focus on students’ needs, combining an emphasis on writing in the academic disciplines with writing in the workplace. Although interdisciplinary students certainly have opportunities to participate in internships within their field, the internships I propose encourage a writing emphasis based on the idea that these writing practices can help students learn from members within a community of practice and prepare them for a dynamic workforce.
Students in these WID internships first take an introductory course in professional and technical writing that is linked with the internship practicum; this introductory course is designed to help them learn how to draft documents relevant for their internship and become familiar with organizational cultures, helping them transfer their academic classroom experiences to the internship. In a study of knowledge transfer from the classroom to internship,Narayanan, Olk, and Fukami (2010)suggested that the more an individual is prepared and ready for a learning experience, the greater the learning is likely to be and, eventually, the better the internship outcomes. The authors posited that a student’s ability to transfer and apply knowledge to the internship is determined by two factors: general academic preparedness and specific internship readiness. Other scholars such asBrent (2012)indicated that students cannot be expected to completely transfer the skills they learn in the classroom to the workplace, but they can, however, draw on rhetorical knowledge learned, or the “broad mental schemas that allow a writer to adapt to new rhetorical situations” (p. 560). The linked classes—the introductory professional and technical writing class paired with the internship practicum—specifically connect classroom curriculum in an effort to minimize students’ apprehension and alleviate the potential struggles that can occur when trying to integrate into new organizational cultures. At the same time, the courses also help students learn to transfer the rhetorical knowledge learned in the classroom to the various situations, interactions, and overall tasks they will encounter in the internship. Furthermore, the linked classes take WID practices further by asking students to step into the role of intern and become socialized into an organizational community (for more information on courses linked to internships, seeBourelle, 2012).
The introductory professional and technical writing course I describe in the next section (the first in the linked sequence) can be taught using a variety of organizations; however, there are many reasons for collaborating with nonprofits. To start, asRehling (2000)argued, working with nonprofits encourages students to stay actively involved in the community after the course or internship ends, volunteering their efforts, whereas in an industry setting, the internship typically ends when the student receives college credit. Moreover,Rehling (2000)claimed that internships in nonprofits often expose students to a wider range of writing forms, so these sites may be more beneficial to interdisciplinary students who will write in a variety of genres. In addition, the introductory course I developed utilizes a service-learning pedagogy as a way to enhance students’ learning experiences (Bailis & Ganger, 2006;Bringle, Hatcher, & Muthiah, 2010;Eyler, Giles, Stenson, & Gray, 2001;Imperial, Perry, & Katula, 2007), prompting them to become active, critical citizens (Dubinsky, 2002). Nonprofits are a natural fit with service-learning, as students have the opportunity to work with diverse members of their local community.
Service-learning is an important aspect for other reasons as well, most notably the idea that students learn to write for the community. In his discussion of the variations between service-learning approaches,Deans (2000)described writingforthe community as work that students perform for an outside organization; within this branch of service-learning, students collaborate and interact with the service partner and produce deliverables to an outside audience. According toDeans (2000), within writingforthe community service projects, the student or team of students enters into a client relationship with the nonprofit, and the writing that the student or team generates constitutes both a service for the nonprofit client and a medium for student learning in a “real-world” rhetorical situation. (p. 108)
The quotations surrounding “real world” suggest that this writing experience can only simulate the writing practices that occur within the workplace; therefore, an introductory course that focuses on writing for the community can become an appropriate segue for actual writing in the workplace during the internship. Make no mistake, service-learning and internships are different experiences—service-learning often focuses on the reciprocity between partner and student (Dubinsky, 2002), whereas internships tend to focus on student benefits—but service-learning in the classroom can serve as a natural bridge to the experiences within the internship.
In the sections that follow, I outline the introductory course in the linked sequence, describe how students transitioned into the internship practicum, and discuss their experiences as noted in their internship reflections. Before describing the WID internships, I first detail the introductory course as the class helped me, the instructor, as well as the students, determine which nonprofits best suited the students’ interests and the projects they would create within the positions. Throughout the discussion that follows, I hope to further the conversation of internships, describing a new approach to these preparatory experiences.
Building a Foundation for the WID Internships
The first step in creating WID internships was to create the curriculum for a Writing for the Professions course, which was an introductory professional and technical writing class that was linked to the WID internship, meaning students had to take this course first before moving on to participate in the WID practicum and internship. The Writing in the Professions class at Arizona State University, where I first piloted the WID internships, is an advanced interdisciplinary writing course that emphasizes professional and technical communication skills for students entering diverse professions. Students who take this course are often business majors, political science majors, or are within other majors across campus that encourage students to develop their writing skills for successful workplace communication. When designing this course, I collaborated with local nonprofits to create a service-learning curriculum where students would write documents that benefit the organization. AsTurnley (2007)suggested, I designed this course in response to the need to prepare students for “situated understandings and multiple literacies,” encouraging “students’ professional, intellectual, and civic engagement” (p. 104). Working with these organizations within a classroom setting allows students “to analyze and respond to real, dynamic situations, and this sort of situated research and writing can help students develop rhetorical strategies and problem-solving skills” (Turnley, 2007, p. 106).
Students move on to the internship practicum, which provides a structured classroom environment for students to continue their learning by reading and discussing relevant coursework appropriate to the internship; at the same time they are taking the practicum course, they are working as interns within the nonprofit organizations. Instructors either serve as mentors in the internships, holding writing workshops and providing advice regarding any issues that may arise or as internship coordinators when possible. The aspect of partnering with the nonprofits beforehand, throughout the introductory professional and technical writing course, and within the actual internship is important because the partnership allows the instructor to gain a sense of what documents the interns will write. This information can help the instructor adequately match the interns with the nonprofit based on the needs of both parties. Additionally, linking the introductory course with an internship provides students with sustained opportunities to make “critical connections among technology, communication, and rhetoric” (Turnley, 2007, p. 105), helping students practice rhetorical principles in various contexts, including the context of a professional organization (Bourelle, 2012). In a sense, the service-learning projects offer the opportunity forLave and Wenger’s (1991)“legitimate peripheral participation” before allowing students to become fully immersed in their communities of practice within their internships.
Course Design: Writing in the Professions
I started the course design by collaborating with the directors at five local nonprofits to determine the curriculum of the Writing in the Professions course. I worked with these same nonprofits in a previous class and had initially found them on the English department’s website list of internship providers. I expressed interest in keeping the curriculum of the Writing in the Professions class focused on five outcomes. Students would (a) learn to write and/or create both text and multimodal professional and technical documents for an outside audience; (b) build individual and teamwork skills, including verbal and written communicative skills; (c) create an electronic portfolio for the job market with a diverse set of documents; (d) develop an understanding of the community around them and the needs of diverse community members (through reflection of their work); and (e) gain hands-on experience that would prepare them for writing and working outside academia.
The nonprofit directors and I decided that students would write recommendation reports, fundraiser proposals, and multimodal marketing materials. I divided the class into “businesses” or writing groups of five to six students, and each group worked with a different nonprofit. For the recommendation report, students individually researched ideas for a fundraiser that the nonprofit could easily implement, evaluating three ideas and ultimately choosing one. They brought recommended ideas back to the group and collaboratively decided which fundraiser would be most feasible. After choosing a fundraiser idea, each team wrote a proposal that detailed the event, from an extended business plan to an estimated budget. Working individually again, students created multimodal documents to advertise either the nonprofit in general or the fundraiser. Students also communicated, both verbally and in writing, with potential vendors who could either sponsor or cater the event, as well as with other members within the nonprofit, explaining the event and their proposed plans. Finally, they were required to present their ideas to the nonprofit. Students also worked toward creating a portfolio with sample projects and a resume, and they either prepared to apply for a job in their field or for an internship with the same nonprofits they had been working with throughout the semester.
Recruiting Students
After designing the curriculum for the Writing in the Professions course, I recruited students by posting a description on our University’s website. I noted the course’s previous success at placing English majors in subsequent internships (for more on the results of these internships, seeBourelle, 2014), and I suggested that students who were interested in learning to improve their writing skills while working within their majors take the course. The course would help them get their feet wet with professional writing and perhaps pique their interest in learning to write in the context of their discipline.
Recruiting Interns
As the semester progressed and students worked through the curriculum, I indicated which nonprofit organizations were seeking interns to work with them. Six students expressed interest, and we discussed their personal goals for the experience. Two potential interns were English majors, testing the waters of technical writing, and the other four were interdisciplinary, including business, political science, biology and society, and graphic design. Regardless of their major, all of these students recognized the value of professional writing and the importance of writing for their future careers. After many discussions, together, the prospective interns and I decided that if they were hired, we would determine how the internship could be relevant for them as well as the nonprofit organizations.
On completion of the introductory course, these six students interviewed with the nonprofits, showcasing their portfolios during the interview. Only three of the five nonprofits we worked with requested interns, although some requested more than one. The organizations (names have been removed to protect identity) were Nonprofit A, dedicated to eradicating domestic violence; Nonprofit B, dedicated to aiding children and adults with autism; and Nonprofit C, dedicated to removing negative stereotypes for underrepresented groups, including Muslims and Latinos in the United States. The interviews gave the directors a sense of whom they wanted to hire and what tasks they wanted completed. Nonprofit A requested marketing materials for an upcoming event; Nonprofit B requested a technical manual and a grant proposal; and Nonprofit C requested website content, desktop publishing materials, a marketing proposal, and a grant proposal.
After meeting with the directors, I wanted to talk to each of the students to learn whether they were interested in any of the internship tasks. I also wanted to talk to their disciplinary internship coordinators to collaborate on the curriculum for the internship’s practicum course and to learn what documents they felt would be relevant for each student’s discipline. (Note: I use the title “disciplinary internship coordinator” to denote the faculty across the curriculum with whom I collaborated, and I refer to myself as the internship supervisor, as I was the instructor of the internship course and oversaw all interns’ tasks.) I would be the internship coordinator for the English students, so I met with them first to determine what they wanted to complete. We decided that one would write a technical manual for Nonprofit B and the other would complete the grant proposal for Nonprofit C, as these tasks best represented their interests. For the sake of my argument regarding internships that require collaboration with instructors across the disciplines, in the sections that follow, I focus only on three nonmajors and their experiences (for more information on the two English internships and the lessons learned within, seeBourelle, 2014). In the next section, I discuss the process of meeting with each student and his or her disciplinary internship coordinator to establish curriculum and tasks.
The WID Internships: Collaboration and Structure
At Arizona State University, professional writing internships are typically reserved for English majors. However, I worked for a college within the university that promoted career exploration by allowing students to take a variety of courses that would potentially count toward their majors (depending on departmental approval); therefore, the rationale for opening professional writing internships to nonmajors could be justified as career exploration. These exploratory majors often prompted collaboration between instructors, thus the rationale for WID internships fit within the parameters of the college. I sought course approval to teach the WID internship by first submitting to the department a rationale and a course description for the corresponding practicum. My course load typically included teaching two internship practicums a year, and this internship was structured into my existing course load. One practicum was reserved for English majors and the WID internship was open to all students who were interested, regardless of discipline.
Outreach to Internship Coordinators
Each discipline has its own internship coordinator, and this information was easy to find via the university website. If a discipline does not have an individual coordinator, the college in which the discipline is housed does. Each coordinator is allowed to take on a certain number of students and this number varies according to discipline. When I reached out to the disciplinary internship coordinators to explain my idea, which included students taking a practicum, many of them indicated their disciplines did not require a traditional internship practicum; instead, the coordinators often serve as a mentor, meeting one-on-one to offer individualized assistance. Unfortunately, the graphic design student was required to take his own discipline’s practicum; therefore, he could not be enrolled in my course (see the Challenges and Lessons Learned section for more details). In the end, there were five interns working for three nonprofits and three of those students were interdisciplinary.
The Practicum
I designed the upper division practicum to be taught in a hybrid format. Departmental policy required the interns to work on site between 60 and 130 hours total, depending on how many credits they needed, but I also crafted my own requirements, which included students meeting with me for 2 hours every month to discuss on-the-job issues. Students were also required to take workshops that would teach them to write documents they were unfamiliar with (i.e., grants, marketing plans, etc.), and the disciplinary internship coordinators would lead these workshops. At the end of the semester, students turned in a final portfolio, adding their work to the portfolio they created in the introductory Writing in the Professions class. The portfolio housed frequent progress reports, providing updates about their work, as well as a final statement where the interns would reflect on their internship and relate their experience to their future careers. Finally, the interns were required to participate in an exit interview where they would be given the opportunity to express what they learned and critique their overall experience.
Russell (2007)suggested that when teaching a course such as professional writing and communication, the instructor should ask other faculty across campus for help teaching specific genres; therefore, I asked other disciplinary internship coordinators to collaborate on the curriculum of the internship practicum. These meetings were with all of the coordinators at the same time. We first had to decide the actual curriculum beyond the standard requirements I had in place to ensure the students could earn internship credit for their majors. In order to fulfill each major’s internship requirements, the coordinators would have to approve the intern’s tasks and participate in the exit interviews, determining whether the intern should receive course credit. Together, we decided the outcomes of the practicum and internship would prompt students to (a) learn to read and write discipline-specific texts; (b) become socialized into their chosen disciplines by engaging and interacting with members of their organizational community; (c) practice career-enhancing skills, including writing, problem solving, and critical thinking; (d) increase their career preparedness; and (e) continue to develop the professional portfolio they created in the introductory course.
To encourage the learning of these outcomes, we decided one assignment would include having students read articles from their disciplines throughout the semester and create an annotated bibliography. Students would choose their own readings and write annotations about how the articles would benefit them during their internship research and in their future careers. In addition, the coordinators and I decided that all interns had to read key readings relevant for interns who are new to the working world. Some of these articles includedChris Anson and Lee Forsberg’s (1990) “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing,”Susan Katz’s (1998)“A Newcomer Gains Power: An Analysis of the Role of Rhetorical Expertise,” andEmily Sopensky and Laurie Modrey’s (1995) “Survival Skills for Communicators Within Organizations.” I included online discussions of these articles within the supplemental Blackboard course shell. To further facilitate discussion, the coordinators and I agreed that I would create a course blog where students could keep in contact with one another and ask advice from the coordinators, the disciplinary experts. The coordinators would also lead workshops on documents in which I was unfamiliar (i.e., marketing proposals and certain desktop publishing software). In lieu of meeting with me for 2 hours a month, the students could meet with the internship coordinator within their discipline.
Each internship coordinator was agreeable to these internship requirements except for the graphic design department; however, this coordinator and I were able to set up an internship to be housed under the graphic design acronym, to which I served as this student’s mentor (I discuss this internship more in the Challenges and Lessons Learned section of this article). In the following section, I discuss how the internships were established based on the students’ needs. I also outline the interns’ experiences and what they felt they gained from the internship, as evidenced in their final reflections.
The Internships: Student Experiences
In this section, I focus on collaboratively determining what internships would best suit the interns’ needs. I describe the internships in detail, illustrating the interns’ tasks and responsibilities. I also include their reflections on the internship, highlighting what they learned and the challenges they faced. Students’ names have been changed to protect anonymity. All reflections were obtained with human-subject approval by the Institutional Review Board at Arizona State University.
The Political Science Major
Adam was the leader of his group during the introductory Writing in the Professions course and worked hard to write a fundraiser proposal for his nonprofit, an organization dedicated to helping refugees rebuild their lives. His group researched and proposed a bowling event, and they prepared to present their ideas. Unfortunately, the director of the nonprofit could not make it to the presentation and ultimately decided against holding the fundraiser. Although the students were disappointed with the results, many in this group attended a fundraiser for another nonprofit to lend assistance, and Adam was one of them. He commented that his experiences in the class and during the fundraiser really piqued his interest in working in public relations for a nonprofit, and he expressed a desire to work toward furthering these skills in the internship. Adam wanted to help Nonprofit A—the organization dedicated to helping victims of domestic violence—market its upcoming event (this nonprofit was different from the nonprofit he was originally placed with in the introductory class). His disciplinary internship coordinator suggested that since Adam was mostly interested in joining a public relations firm after graduation, we should request that Adam help with public relations for the nonprofit’s upcoming event, to which the director was agreeable.
After a few meetings between Adam, the nonprofit director, and myself, we decided that Adam would write a mass email that could be sent to potential donors and he would also create marketing materials for the event, including a brochure and an advertisement. The event was a golf-themed fundraiser where participants would play a round of golf for charity and local golf courses and businesses could donate money and prizes. Adam was interested in visiting these potential donors around the Phoenix area to talk to owners, informing them of the event and how to become a sponsor. We all left the meeting feeling positive about the internship; however, Adam ran into some communication issues in the beginning. During the first 3 weeks of the internship, the director was not available and Adam was unsure of how to proceed. In his reflection, he stated: During the first couple of weeks of my internship, it became clear that there was no planning or scheduling on behalf of the organization. I was tossed from one person to the other like a football, none of who [sic] had any idea about what we are or will be doing during the weeks ahead. This chaotic atmosphere alongside the confusing pool of emails that I had to read through killed my enthusiasm at the very beginning of the internship.
Adam relayed his frustrations in our first monthly meeting, and together, we planned how he would handle the situation. He contacted the director directly to explain what was going on, and she was able to rectify the situation and assign someone to help Adam specifically. Although Adam had a rocky start, in his final reflection, he stated, “I have to mention that although it was very frustrating, the situation made me realize how essential planning is to a successful project.” Despite his frustrations, from the onset, Adam was already learning to communicate with the members of his community of practice.
In terms of the writing that was occurring during his internship, Adam expressed that he was learning to revise according to review from the nonprofit director. For instance, in his progress report, he discussed a mass email that he wrote to send to local businesses to preface his upcoming visit. In his reflection, he wrote about this new experience of having his work edited, stating, “Once I opened the reviewed version of the email I was surprised to find out that [the director] decided to rewrite the whole email.” Adam noted that, at first, he planned on simply accepting the changes, mostly regarding grammar and punctuation, before sending out the document. According toHewett, Remley, Zemliansky, and DiPardo (2010), this response may be typical for many novice writers entering the workforce who may not understand that collaborative writing entails meaning-making and meaning- communicating among collaborators, and they will assume that they will write a document and then revise only their grammar and usage flaws. Indeed, Adam’s initial approach to the revisionary suggestions was to simply take them at face value and make the changes (and perhaps this was the director’s way of approaching the writing task as well). However, theKatz (1998)reading in the practicum focused on the idea of collaboration, specifically suggesting that a client may have to work with an intern to revise his or her work. In his reflection, Adam talked about how this reading helped him recognize an intern’s stage of “transition and resolution,” and he defined this stage as “when people realize what and where the problem is with your work and you try to fix it.” Ultimately, Adam and the director were able to work together to change content in the document beyond grammar and punctuation errors. In this example, Adam participated in effective collaboration, sharing responsibility and working through the process of writing while also managing conflict through enhanced communication, traitsBurnett, Cooper, and Welhausen (2013)noted are imperative for a successful technical communicator.
Adam also commented on the socialization aspect of the internship, adding that the experience gave him “the chance to work on interpersonal and writing skills, and it did teach [him] some equally important lessons that [he] can use in the future such as planning ahead, effective communication, and good record keeping.” The application of these lessons to future workplace situations illustratesBrent’s (2012)idea of transfer, where students learn to “re-create new skills in new contexts by building on the foundations laid down in earlier contexts” (p. 563). During the exit interview, the internship coordinator and I determined that Adam had learned valuable lessons not only about the revisionary process of writing but also about how to establish public relations among coworkers, not just those he was working with in the larger Phoenix community.
The Biology and Society Major
Within the introductory course, Alice worked with Nonprofit A and helped her team complete a fundraiser proposal for a night of putt-putt golf, where 10% of the proceeds would go directly to helping abused women and children. Her group pitched its idea to the director and they were able to implement the fundraiser. The fundraiser generated approximately $500 for the nonprofit, and Alice was pleased with the experience. Although she was interested in continuing her work with the same nonprofit, she wanted the internship to be more relevant for her major. Her internship coordinator suggested that she work with the Nonprofit B, the organization dedicated to helping autistic individuals, because she could read articles about the disorder and how those living with autism function in society. Her focus of research in the major was to study the influence of genetics versus environment on human behavior, so this nonprofit seemed like a natural fit for Alice.
As stated in her reflections, Alice’s “main focus during the internship was to write a grant in order to provide scholarships for needy children living with Autism.” Through the course readings, she was able to better understand autism and the activism in her local community, and through the internship, she was able to write documents that would help these individuals. She had many goals beyond the grant, including redesigning an informational brochure and creating a letterhead. She was able to complete a vast amount of work but did not have enough time to complete all of her goals; she addressed why in her reflection: Having never written a grant before, I thought that the process would be simple and relatively easy to complete. The grant was more complex than I anticipated because there was a lot of information to sift through that didn’t seem to fit into the type of information that was needed for the grant. Although I was not able to get a great number of projects completed for [Nonprofit B], I am very pleased with the grant work that I finished during the internship.
Alice had never written a grant before and voiced her concern over the course of the internship. She attended various fundraisers the nonprofit held, interacting with clients and other volunteers; this social aspect helped her gain insight into the community the nonprofit was serving, and these experiences allowed her to more fully immerse in the community of practice and engage with multiple other community members who all had some stake in the organization. She met several times with the director to review the language used in the organization’s previous grants; from these sessions, she learned to talk, or write, like the members in her organizational community. These experiences allowed her to write a successful grant that generated money for the nonprofit to provide assistance to families who could not afford therapy for their autistic children. Essentially, her collaboration within her immediate community of practice—the nonprofit—allowed her to help her larger community of practice—families of autistic children.
Alice’s experience was a successful one, and she was content with the written work she completed for Nonprofit B. Her internship coordinator and I met with Alice during the exit interview and determined that she had fulfilled the writing requirements. Her annotated bibliography also indicated that the readings she chose contributed to the focus of her major, which was to learn how individuals with certain disorders function in society and how society can better serve them and their needs. Alice was able to improve her writing skills and she was also able to communicate with the director and design a deliverable. Perhaps more important, she learned to adapt socially and intellectually within her organizational community (Wojahn, Dyke, Riley, Hensel, & Brown, 2001).
The Business Major
The final intern I will discuss is Kevin, the business major. He was interested in working with Nonprofit C to complete a marketing proposal, which would be the main project for his portfolio. He would also complete donation letters, asking the nonprofit’s contacts for their continued support in the community. His internship coordinator offered a marketing proposal workshop, which I attended, and Kevin left the workshop with an outline that he could use to generate ideas and craft his writing. We met with the nonprofit director and Kevin began his internship, leaving the meeting with notes and documents that would help him write the proposal. Soon after, in his first progress report, Kevin indicated that he was having trouble communicating with the nonprofit director. His disciplinary internship coordinator prompted Kevin to set up meetings with the director to discuss goals and to collaboratively write portions of the marketing plan. They were able to craft an outline and write many of the proposal sections, and the director agreed to take what he and Kevin had worked on and finish the document himself. When he reflected on his work at the end of the internship, Kevin stated, I felt this internship would have gone a lot smoother with decisive goals and agendas in mind. I feel that the focus should have pertained to one project and that project should have been thoroughly explained so I could write with a purpose instead of being forced to draft these vague skeletons of documents. I felt at times that it was frustrating to try to get information from the nonprofit.
As this nonprofit was fairly new, the directors were still trying to determine their goals and their place in the community. Recall thatHenry (2013)suggested that a successful communicator will learn to become a cultural analyst, which involves determining the basic assumptions that drive the organization and what external adaptations the organization faces. Kevin learned that the nonprofit he worked with was facing challenges in establishing goals and its place in the community. He noted, “The lack of direction makes it difficult to persuade people to donate money and other things when you don’t know what they are donating to.” Fortunately, Kevin was able to see the benefits of the internship, stating that the experience was a “good lesson in the cubical workplace,” giving him “a broader understanding of how things will go down in the future and the proper channels to handle such tasks.” The director of the nonprofit also acknowledged that Kevin “was able to finish the last few weeks strong as a result of better communication.” With this increased communication and collaboration, Kevin was able to analyze the culture of his organizational community, adapt accordingly, and work through whatWojahn et al. (2001)call “ill-defined, ‘messy’ problems” that often occur in the workforce (p. 132).
Although Kevin’s situation improved and he was able to finish writing donation letters and a large portion of the marketing plan, he did not have a completed main project to showcase in his portfolio. His internship coordinator and I were able to determine that this situation was beyond Kevin’s control, and we asked that he craft his portfolio by combining samples of documents he created in the introductory Writing in the Professions course with the donation letters and the portion of the marketing plan he was able to complete. The internship coordinator carefully reviewed the portfolio and agreed that Kevin could earn one credit for the WID internship (he had signed up for three). He suggested that Kevin complete an internship within the business college in order to fulfill the final two credits, to which I would serve as mentor.
As can be seen with Kevin’s case, not all internships across the disciplines are successful in terms of deliverables; however, this lack of success can happen in any internship situation.McEachern (2001)described how interns can become disgruntled when the nonprofit director is nonresponsive. McEachern claimed that there is value in any internship, whether it is in learning to write or learning to communicate in context. The fact that writing and communicating occurred in the workplace and not just in the academic class is an important distinction; asFreedman, Adam, and Smart (1994)argued, these two spaces are “radically distinct” from one another, even when a course closely mimics the practices of the workplace (p. 221). One essential difference is the absence of true socialization within an organizational culture. Regardless of his writing successes or failures, Kevin was able to see firsthand how members of this organizational culture communicate with one another and he was also able to engage within the activities of this community as well. It can be argued that all of the WID interns, not just Kevin, gained a sense of the social nature of writing thatFreedman et al. (1994)claimed can only be actualized through writing in the workplace, including experiencing “the complex phenomena of multiple readerships,” which includes “the different life-cycle of their texts, and the different literacy practices surrounding the texts (reading practices and collaborative composing strategies)” (p. 221). Beyond learning writing skills, all of the interns became “full participants in socio-cultural practice” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 29). In addition, despite the challenges within the internships, each intern was able to benefit by engaging in literacy practices within their communities of practice.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
When teaching WID internships, there were many challenges. I previously thought that the biggest challenge would be working with disciplinary internship coordinators to design curriculum; however, it was more difficult working with the directors of nonprofits to help them stay focused on giving students writing tasks. Motivation may have the potential to dwindle if students are not explicitly involved in work that they feel benefits their future. As I mentioned in the previous section, Adam had a difficult time working with his nonprofit in the beginning. Fortunately, we were able to talk to the director and get Adam back on task and he was able to complete his responsibilities. In this reflection, Adam wrote of the importance of these meetings with me, as the internship supervisor, stating, After communicating my sense of frustration to my instructor, a three-way meeting was arranged with my contact person at the organization The meeting was very effective as it helped both [the director] and [me] clarify a lot of misunderstandings that were the result of communicating through email and text.
From this experience, I suggest that the supervisor or mentor checks in with the studentandthe director of the nonprofit on a frequent basis to promote increased motivation throughout the entire internship. Establishing clear expectations and following up with the director and student should ensure that students are performing the work they find interesting, and this three-way communication should ensure that all of the parties’ needs are being met.
It can also be difficult to figure out how to make the internship relevant for the students’ discipline, let alone how to make it satisfy the requirements for his or her major. For some students, it may take a little more than minor finessing to fulfill their department’s internship requirements. The graphic designer, Tim, whom I mentioned previously, wanted to work toward enhancing his design portfolio. The students in the introductory Writing in the Professions course completed a proposal, and he went above and beyond, using a desktop publishing program to create a multimodal document in order to enhance his text. This taste for desktop publishing led him to inquire about a potential desktop publishing internship, to which Nonprofit C expressed interest, as they needed a logo, a website design, and the written content within the site. I spoke with the internship coordinator within the graphic design department, and we decided Tim would write website content and develop a professional desktop publishing portfolio; these requirements would be part of the practicum internship course offered by his own department. Although I was not Tim’s internship supervisor or teacher of his internship practicum, I served as a mentor, offering advice throughout the internship. In the end, it was a rewarding experience for all involved. I conclude that even when the instructor of the introductory course in the linked sequence cannot serve as the instructor of record for the internship practicum, there are still opportunities to be involved when creating the internship requirements and mentoring the students.
Additionally, it may be relevant to share the research presented in this article, especiallyLave and Wenger’s (1991)scholarship that suggested that deliverable goals, such as writing or producing a document, may be less important in an internship than the socialization that occurs. Although the interns need to create a portfolio of the work they performed, it may also be important for the interns to write reflections that outline the intangible goals they learned while participating fully in their communities of practice.
Conclusion
There are many ways to structure WID internships so that students can benefit from the experiences. This article simply illustrates one way to design internships, and I encourage my readers to examine ways in which they can collaborate with other instructors or internship directors across campus to implement these experiences. One area of research that can be further developed is the idea of linking courses with WID internships: Is it necessary or can the internship stand alone? A better question may be whether the WID internship, in fact, prepares students to enter the workforce and enter various communities of practice. In a follow-up interview, Alice responded to these questions, noting first the importance of the introductory course and how the class experience encouraged her to apply for the internship. She stated, “The internship opportunity came only as a direct result of your linked class, and the skills that I learned during that semester would prove to be very useful.” Her interview also revealed the importance of the writing in the course: The writing I did in the course and the internship had to be concise, yet thorough, which was very different from the descriptive writing that had been required up until that point in my education. Not only was I able to add my accomplishments to my resume, proving that I could successfully implement what I had learned, but I also became a dynamic employee because of it.
Her response highlights that the introductory class helped her understand the differences between professional writing and descriptive writing and proved valuable in preparing her for the internship, not only in writing but also in joining the workforce. In addition, she suggested that the class is what helped her obtain the internship, an opportunity she might not have received otherwise.
When asked about the relevance of the WID internship for her career trajectory, Alice stressed the importance of writing in her discipline, admitting this was something she did not recognize before the internship. She suggested that because of her degree’s focus on biological sciences, she thought she was “an unlikely candidate for the internship. However, the experience was challenging, rewarding, and valuable in [her] career.” She also noted the applicability of these writing skills within her current position, adding, I was able to use the skills that I had learned in both the linked class and the [nonprofit] internship. In addition to managing an extensive client list, I was developing proposals for clients, writing procedures, and helping to develop website content all within my first year with the company. I am confident that having the opportunity to use my technical writing skills prior to graduating helped me obtain my current position.
Her interview indicates that Alice learned the value of writing in her discipline, something that might not have been evident without the introductory class and subsequent internship. As she illustrates, the class directly prepared her for the internship, which would ultimately help her obtain a job where she could apply these new skills.
Adam also reflected on his experience and made connections to his current career. His writing projects demanded clear communication between all parties involved, and this lack of structure was perhaps the most illuminating for Adam. He stated, I remember there was a clear lack of communication and no clear purpose or objective on where to take the organization and how to get it there. What I didn’t realize back then was that I was offered a peek inside an organization struggling to keep itself together. Fast forward to today where I see myself putting a team together to help build an organization. At every turn I draw parallels between team dynamics and my experience at the [nonprofit].
He noted that he is presently working to implement a health care startup organization, where he and his colleagues are creating a database that can house a patient’s entire medical history in one place, allowing the organization to “continually analyze this data for patterns that predict illness or complications.” In order to better establish his startup organization, he is presenting his ideas and self-designed marketing tools to potential investors—skills he says he learned in the linked classes. Specifically, he claimed that the lessons he learned during the internship helped him recognize the type of leader he needs to be and how he wants to run his organization. He ended the interview by acknowledging, “I actually learned a lot from both your class and the internship opportunity.”
As important as these experiences may be, the collaborative efforts involved in creating these internships may be too much work for individual instructors to take on, especially when more students become interested. Forming WID partnerships may be more beneficial (and less time consuming) for all parties involved, which could include leading workshops regarding how to form collaborative internships, encouraging other instructors to include writing within their department’s internship standards, or offering to serve in a mentor capacity for the writing portion of internships. Admittedly, it does take time to establish these courses and internships, and even mentoring can be a time-consuming task in itself. However, there is a great need to work with others across the disciplines. Although it may seem like too much work for one instructor, asRussell (2002)indicated, it may take the efforts of individual faculty members or administration to develop these partnerships with instructors across the disciplines. The collaborative WID internships I describe in this article could be one step toward establishing a WID internship program where faculty work together to incorporate more writing within internships for interdisciplinary students. I encourage others who are interested in developing internships to take this model I have presented and craft it to fit their own internships and potential WID internship programs, creating their own communities of practice where members can learn from one another. As I have hopefully shown, WID internships can be one way to create the “extensive partnerships” across the disciplines that Russell advocates, establishing experiences that are beneficial for all involved.
Footnotes
Author’s Note
This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Arizona State University. Student comments are reproduced by permission.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Author Biography