Guide For Internship Sponsors

    The School of Criminal Justice Internship Office is committed to providing students with the skills required to be competitive in today's job market. We endeavor to build and maintain partnerships with criminal justice agencies in order to foster student growth. This guide serves to enhance those partnerships by sharing what we have learned and observed through working with a wide variety of agencies. Time has proven that the components described in this booklet lead to a highly successful internship program. We encourage you to incorporate these ideas into the program you provide to our students.

Goals of the Internship Program

• To provide an opportunity to apply and evaluate academic experience in a professional field setting.
• To support and be closely related to classroom-based criminal justice courses.
• To provide an opportunity for gaining useful criminal justice experience, thus improving employment potential upon graduation.
• To provide an opportunity to explore possible career choices.
• To provide a link between the academic and operational criminal justice communities for the purpose of improving knowledge and delivery of criminal justice services.

    Placement Procedures

    Orientation

    Training

    Supervision

    Developing a Quality Learning Experience

    Performance Evaluations, Letters of Recommendation 

Developing An Effective Recruiting Plan

Organizations should:

• Inform the internship office of the address and phone number of the agency contact person.
• Attend the annual career fair to recruit interns and publicize opportunities.
• Provide the MSU Criminal Justice Internship Office with a data sheet and handouts describing intern positions. Develop brochures and position descriptions.
• Utilize the MSU State News, the student newspaper, to advertise intern vacancies (517-355-3447).

• Provide students with the agency name and intern position description via the School's web site, [www.cj.msu.edu] and in 535 Baker Hall, the Criminal Justice Resource Center.
• Flyers are posted on a bulletin board across from the Internship Office.
• Special requests are placed on the web and distributed via a Listserv.
• Maintain up-to-date records for effective advising and referral.

Efficient and Organized Placement Procedures

    Organizations should establish one contact person who will receive placement requests and arrange agency interviews. This may include forwarding request(s) to individual units who then arrange the interview, but the contact person is responsible for follow-through.

    Students are notified of agency selection timeline within three weeks of receipt of placement request. Agencies will initially receive the student's resume. Additional materials, such as a transcript or writing sample, may be requested of the student by the agency. Agencies should also inform students of additional application requirements such as a background check or receiving the hepatitis B vaccine.

    Students should be notified of acceptance or denial approximately two months before their starting date if at all possible. This would be ideal in order for students to make alternate arrangements for classes, housing or other internship positions. (Of course this will not be possible for agencies who receive a request two months or less before the starting date.)

Orientation

    Interns should be provided an orientation to the agency on their first day, including:

• A tour of the agency
• Introductions to agency personnel
• Verbal/written descriptions of the agency's policies, procedures, structure, etc.

Training

    Interns should be provided pre-internship training within the first week as well as on-the-job training. This should include the following:

• Written/verbal descriptions of their duties
• An outline of their schedule for the semester
• Expectations regarding timeliness, confidentiality, working independently, and the agency dress code
• Safety precautions and responses
• Office equipment training such as phones, computers, copy machines

Supervision

    Supervisors need to meet with the intern within the first two weeks to review the student's learning objective statement. Interns are expected to experience growth in a number of areas in order to receive academic credit. These areas include job competencies, understanding policies and procedures, interpersonal skills, career exploration, and research skills such as seeking new information and writing reports. Interns may have very specific skills they wish to learn, or they may need some assistance in developing their objectives. They realize that the agency may not be able to provide them with opportunities to accomplish all their objectives. This is a good time to confirm with the intern what they will or won't be exposed to. Interns need to know who to report to regarding job responsibilities or scheduling.

    Supervisors, both direct and functional, should provide interns with feedback regarding their performance throughout the internship. If an intern is not contributing as much as you had hoped, let him/her know this up front. Give the intern time to correct or adjust work behavior. Interns may not realize where the boundaries lie between only doing what they are told and taking the initiative.

Developing a Quality Learning Experience

    Interns are eager to learn as much as possible about your agency. Students may assist the agency while learning more about the field. Quality learning experiences should include a variety of the following:

• Observation of professionals (at the internship site and at related agencies)
• Interviewing
• Intake procedures
• Courtroom exposure
• Routine patrol
• Attendance at professional meetings or training sessions
• Investigations
• Report writing
• Surveillance
• Designing or proposing programs
• Reviewing or revising manuals
• Computer data entry or word processing
• Administrative work
• Developing and working on projects
• Research

Performance Evaluation, Letters of Recommendation

    The internship program provides agencies with a performance evaluation form which, when returned, is placed in the student's academic file for future reference. Agency feedback assists the Internship Office in determining whether a student will be approved for additional internship opportunities. Employees also appreciate this information when doing reference checks. In addition to this form, interns may request a letter of recommendation for their job search endeavors.

Committed to Excellence

    Michigan State University is a research intensive, land-grant university where people matter. At MSU excellence is a continuing tradition. Innovative and hard working, MSU creates knowledge and extends learning to actively serve the state, the national, and the global community.

To accomplish this, Michigan State University will:

1. Improve access to quality education and expert knowledge
2. Achieve more active learning
3. Generate new knowledge and scholarship across the mission
4. Promote problem solving to address society's needs
5. Advance diversity within community
6. Make people matter

For more information e-mail, Tim Homberg, Internship Coordinator and