Psychology Departmental Student Internship: How to make the process fair and useful

I am sure that you would all agree that offering student internships at the department is a win-win situation for everybody. Students are able to gain valuable skills and experience in a professional environment, and we also get valuable assistance with organizational and research activities in the department at time where resources are scarce. Students, in their effort to develop their graduate profile find opportunities like internships most valuable.

At the Psychology Department, we have been doing this for many years. However, we realized at some point the same students were always involved in the departmental internships. This was due to the process being rather informal; usually a staff member would approach a “apparently” motivated student in class, or very pro-active students would approach a staff member for opportunities.   

Image from: http://www.ucvts.tec.nj.us/cms/lib5/NJ03001805/Centricity/Domain/71/Interns.jpg

Thus, we thought that we needed to come up with a process that would be fair so as to give the same opportunities to all students. At the same time, we wanted to make the process of getting an internship useful from a learning perspective. To address this matter, two years ago we created in the department the Departmental Internship Form. The form is distributed to all Psychology students by email. By following the process described in the form, students are put in a similar situation with applying for a job, and so they learn how to prepare and submit a CV and participate in a job interview. 

This process is fair and transparent to students, and so they all feel they are given the same opportunities. We have successfully followed this practice to advertise research internship, like the one below, or organizational duties (e.g., helping with Psy4All and Science Festival) and civic engagement activities (e.g., MONAS internship).

Should you need any information about the process, please do not hesitate to contact me at vivas@academic.gr.

Ana Vivas

Head of Department