By Laurie Bedord, Future Ag Communicators Chair
For some students, a summer internship has become a staple of the college experience. But is it really as important as it seems?
The answer is yes!
An internship is an integral part to the process of planning a career. This opportunity provides valuable insights that can only be gained through first-hand experience. It also provides a foundation for your later career to be built upon.
As a potential employer, it’s always good to see that an applicant has prior experience – even if it’s in a different area. Yet, we often hear college students say that to gain that experience, they have to have had a job. Not only does an internship qualify as job experience, it looks good on a resume!
Providing exceptional opportunities for future agricultural communicators to test drive a career is also at the heart of the AAEA Ag Communicators Network editorial and marketing communications internships.
Each intern earns a $4,500 stipend for approximately 10 weeks and another $1,000 toward the cost of attending the Agricultural Media Summit. As a member-driven, non-profit organization, the Professional Improvement Foundation (PIF) provides funding, direction and input for these openings.
Continuing this educational and experiential legacy for years to come is a top priority for PIF. What that means is ensuring that our members see the value students gain from this program as well as the importance of steadily growing this initiative.
The contributions that support PIF initiatives like internships come from a variety of sources including an Ag Media Summit grant, donations through member renewals, past president and trustee donations, and sponsorships.
For example, G&G Communications and Sage Communications have helped support the marketing communications internship for a number of years. While funding for the editorial internship has come from PIF’s annual operating budget, there is an opportunity for the right company or group to sponsor this internship as well.
Although these sources have proven fruitful in the past, we know we must also explore new revenue streams. As we look to 2018, PIF is working to expand its reach beyond the traditional resources so we can continue to offer and expand upon the invaluable opportunities our programs for future agricultural communicators present.
Students hired as interns should be paid…no, they actually NEED to be paid.
I’ve worked in higher education as a journalism faculty member for more than 20 years. In the last 10 years, I can count on one hand the number of students I’ve known who weren’t holding down a job and attending school. I’ve encountered more than a few, with families, who worked full-time and attended school full-time.
I won’t burden you with how much a college education costs. What I will relate is that when you offer an unpaid internship to a student, and they accept, not only will they give up a semester of making a couple of thousand dollars for school while living at home, they’ll also be required to pay pay tuition fees for the internship credits (three to six, depending on the hours they spend in your employ) in order for it to count toward graduation.
My first full-time faculty position paid me $44,000 a year: exactly, $1,000 less than I owed the feds for my student loans. The monthly nut for paying it back? $500. And that was 16 years ago. This kind of debt is not uncommon among graduating seniors today.
Yes, students need internship experience but they also need the money. The two should not be mutually exclusive.
Thank you, AAEA, for this leadership by example.