The number of students who want for-credit internships through the University of Vermont has nearly tripled in the past four years, with the pandemic enabling the increase.
“There has been a sharp upward trajectory in our overall internship numbers and you could say not just despite the pandemic, but partly because of the pandemic, we have more opportunities than ever,” Richard Watts, director of the college’s center for research on Vermont, said in a phone interview. “The pandemic has underscored how we can operate in a Zoom environment so it’s more acceptable now to work remotely.”
This past semester, 280 students were enrolled in for-credit internships, while 390 to 400 signed up for spring internships through UVM’s College of Arts and Sciences during recent class registration, Watts said.
About half of those internships are part of the Communities of Practice internship program that started two years ago. There, interns work either one-on-one with organizations, or work on a specific project or group of projects for one of the program’s partners.
In those internships, the university helps manage cohorts of interns so the organization does not have the full responsibility of managing them. Watts said he thinks that the new initiative to co-manage internships has enabled so much growth in the internship program that other schools are looking at UVM as an example.
“The only way for us to scale up these programs to meet student demand is to do things like that, because there’s not 500 organizations in Vermont that can handle students,” Watts said. “But if we can co-manage the internship experience, then we can meet the demands of 400 to 500 students every semester.”
One of the six cohorts — and one that is new this fall — is the Local Democracy Program, which assigns students to work with a small Vermont town far enough from Burlington that students may not have been able to travel there easily.
Fairfax is one such town that received interns this fall; two of them worked together on a semester-long project to help Fairfax make its town report more appealing to residents. They dove right into conducting a survey among residents and presenting their ideas on how to improve the report, said Sarah Hadd, the Fairfax town manager.
“It’s been great to see the support of advisers in this and also helping select interns and select projects, I think that’s been very helpful in contributing to the success of the internships,” Hadd said.
Since most of the work is being done remotely, UVM has been able to offer more internships in places that would be too far from campus for students to travel to on a regular basis, Watts said.
Dominic Bove, a junior majoring in political science, is finishing up a legislative internship working with state Rep. Joseph Troiano, D-Stannard.
Even though the Legislature isn’t in session, Bove said he’s been able to help Troiano with two major projects, and attended events and meetings both over Zoom and in person.
More than 40 students will have internships like Bove’s this spring, working directly with Vermont legislators and co-managed by their advisers, Watts said.
Rowan Hawthorne, a senior who’s graduating this month, a semester early, has had multiple internships throughout her time at the university and was a teaching assistant for the internship program this fall.
“The variety of things I’ve done and the diversity of internships was the best part of it, because I gained a much wider skill set and I was able to improve on my professional skills,” Hawthorne said.
Having a chance to show off their professional skills, and trying out fields to figure out if they like them, are among the ways that students benefit from internships, Watts said.
“It gives students a sense of how the skills and education they’re getting at the university translates into skills that are useful in future jobs,” Watts said.
Watts said he has seen that directly from the hundreds of students he’s worked with. He also said independent research on the overall importance of internships is clear.
“It shows that students that have internships are more likely to find meaningful work, they’re more likely to be paid more, and are more likely to have satisfying careers,” Watts said.
