Good afternoon,
I was wondering if I could ask the Forum about your thoughts/experiences/advice on starting a semi-formal internship program for graduate students to aid in their career development. Do you think it would be a worthwhile endeavor? What internships would be most helpful for students trying to decide on their next career step or looking for some help in making the move to industry? What would make such a program worthwhile to employers? Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Background: I am a (relatively recently tenured) faculty member in a biomedical sciences department at a smaller medical school located outside of the big biotech/pharma hubs. I am involved in graduate student career development in several ways: (a) by virtue of serving as an advisor/PI to PhD students; (b) by serving as one of the lecturers in our outreach program where we talk to undergraduate students about graduate school and career possibilities in biomedical science; and (c) by being involved in admission/recruitment efforts within the graduate program. Our program in general takes a pretty proactive and supportive approach to career development (students are required to fill out a Career Development plan yearly and discuss it with their advisor; the program hosts a number of career development workshops and alumni presentations that discuss various career options and help with skills development in science communications, grant writing, industry careers etc.).
I have heard from some of my students that it would be helpful to have access to internships that would allow them to more readily transition to future careers outside of academia. My first thought was that the students could just take initiative and set up their own internships; graduate school could provide some support in terms of travel money or making arrangements with their advisors. My second thought is that perhaps it is unfair to put the onus on the students to find and arrange internships, although I still wonder about that.
In theory, I can imagine that we may be able to establish some connections to a few local employers. We do have some startups in the area, as well as contract manufacturing companies and testing labs; some of them hire our alumni so, at least in theory, there might be some options. The downside, to me, is that while the employers might be somewhat interested, it may be difficult to match the students and their skills to the employers, especially since our graduate program is relatively small. The other downside is that PIs would need to be convinced that this is a good idea, especially if they are paying students' stipends from grants. At this point, it is unclear what fraction of students is significantly dissatisfied with the available career development options and interested in formal internships. I would like to suggest a survey of graduate students to evaluate their interest but before I do that, I would love to hear opinions or tales of experience from the forum members.
Have you ever had interactions with such programs, either as participants, as employers, or, perhaps, as recruiters looking at a resume that includes internship experiences? What would be the most important factors to make this a valuable experience for the students and a helpful contribution for employers? I don't know if we would expect employers to pay the interns but on the other hand, this could be set up as a credit-earning learning experience, which I think would work for an unpaid internship in terms of the legal requirements.