ECONOMICS 483

Internship in Business Economics

You will be graded on a your daily journal and a 4-5 page paper describing your internship activities. It is assumed you will represent the university in a professional manner, including exhibiting good and timely attendance. In order to receive academic credit for the internship, the external agency must be satisfied with your professional conduct during the internship period.

The Working Journal

Your journal can be handwritten in a notebook or electronically word processed. You must make an entry for each working day. State plainly what you did, what processes you contributed to, and what job skills you used or developed. One approach to the journal is to make a list of each Foundations of Business Knowledge course and each major course, and check off which course provided skills you used each day. A narrative paragraph should be included for each day. This is easy to do if you write your journal entry at the end of each business day, but virtually impossible if you put off your journal writing until the end of the semester or summer.

The Internship Paper

The final paper is based on your working journal, but with an entry for each working day, your main difficulty will be to remove the least interesting, least relevant information. Your final paper can be organized chronologically, around a discussion of different skills you used on the job, around a discussion of how different courses contributed to your performance as a business intern, or a combination of the three. If space and your interests permit, you may present an evaluation of the value of the internship to you personally and address whether you would like to work in that industry or for that specific firm.

Include an introduction and conclusion in your paper. The introduction should explain the overall plan of the paper so the reader knows what to expect and where to look for parts of special interest. Format is unimportant but correct spelling and grammar are essential. Take advantage of the University Writing Center. Because you will be describing your own experiences, skills, and opinions, the paper may be written in the first person, though you may write in the third person if you prefer.

The due date for the final paper and your journal is one week prior to the end of classes for the semester you are registered in ECON 483. Electronic submission as an email attachment is acceptable. You may hand in your paper anytime after the day when you have one month remaining in the internship experience. You are encouraged to hand in a draft paper early, but the instructor is unable read drafts with poor grammar or spelling.