Your role as a mentor is an important part of offering Experiential Learning to DePaul University students. The following tips can help you and your organization enhance a successful internship experience.
- Introduce Your Intern. Provide a good introduction to the organization, quirks of the culture, and important people or resources to be aware of. You may also consider arranging an informational interview for your intern with fellow colleagues to help them prepare for a future career within the industry.
- Communicate. Communicate often with your intern, whether it is to provide feedback, offer training, or to check in on their progress. By keeping the lines of communication open, you can get a sense of how quickly interns
complete projects while offering feedback on the quality of their work.
- Integrate Your Intern. Allowing interns to gain a greater understanding of your organization can help them generate new ideas and have a more rewarding internship. Consider bringing them to meetings, conferences, training, and networking events with you.
- Delegate Projects for Downtime. When delegating projects to your intern, consider mixing short-term and long-term projects. If interns finish short-term tasks early, they will have a long-term project to continue and take initiative on.
- Set S.M.A.R.T. Learning Goals Together. Discuss the marketable skills your intern can learn or hone through the internship experience and help him or her set S.M.A.R.T. goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) in order to achieve them.