By SAMI MCGUIRE
Sports Editor
Learning. Preparation. Skill development. These are traits that college is supposed to instill in its students, but there are some things that can’t be learned in a classroom.
That is why internships are so important to Northwestern Oklahoma State University faculty. While some departments require internships, other departments count it as an elective.
The business department counts it as an elective, and yet they have four students currently in internships.
Business department chair David Hawkins said it was uncommon to have so many students in internships.
“We typically have one or two in the spring because most of our internships are in the accounting program,” Hawkins said. “This is when you have taxes, so the accounting firms look for interns during the spring.”
Out of the four internships the business students have, three are in accounting and the other one is focused on marketing. Two of the students are non-traditional students and were able to leave Alva for their internships.
One student is doing accounting in Kansas and the other is setting up financial record for a non-profit organization in Woodward. The other two internships are here in Alva. Chartwells, the cafeteria, hired an intern to help them with marketing and the other is doing accounting for the City of Alva.
The non-profit organization one student is working for just got approved in December.
“They have zero financial records set up, zero accounts set up,” Hawkins said. “So I was really happy to do that.”
She said it’s a lot easier to start from scratch than it is to correct things.
Brody Nichols, a senior, is the student who took the accounting internship with the City of Alva.
Working at an internship is different than just going to school.
“I’ve learned how to interact with the workers,” Nichols said. “I guess you can interact with your fellow students, but it is more of a working environment rather than two students coming together and trying to figure it out something. You are working with someone who actually knows what they are doing and getting mentored.”
Learning to do work in an internship setting is a big leap forward into the professional world. Internships can help students prepare for a career.
“One of the advisors said he expects students and new hires, to come in and hit the ground running. He said when he was hired he was expected to go through 8 to 12 months of training before he actually did any work. They will teach you some specialty areas but they don’t have the time or the resources to train people. The internships put the students in front of a whole lot of other students, no matter what university they come from. They know how to do stuff,” Hawkins said.
One department that requires internships is social work. To graduate students must have 420 hours in the field. Kylene Rehder, the social work program director, is a advocate for the internship program and its many benefits.
“Outside of agency dynamics they learn ethical and professional behaviors. Sometimes it’s easy to understand what ethics are but ethical situations are so complex time to think through them and process them and consult is needed. Students learn to put research into practice, and how to use practice skills to inform research. They learn everything about agency policy, and how to work with the different groups, organizations and communities,” Rehder said.
Currently social work has nine students doing internships. There are a variety of internships, and students are placed in them depending on their interests and what kind of population the students want to work with.
Mass Communications also requires for students to take an internship. Education requires student teaching, which is similar to internship work. Criminal Justice requires an internship. Psychology also requires field experience. Agriculture has internships as an elective
“We have it as a requirement because we are credited by the counsel and social work education,” Rehder said. “As an accredited program we use a model called competency based education. Not only do our students have to demonstrate an understanding of it in the classroom but they also have to apply it in a practice arena. It is required because they can not graduate until they demonstrate a practiced skill set.”
Developing a skill set to prepare students for the future is important, and to some it is what college is all about.
“Our job here is to prepare students for employment,” Rehder said. “We feel like it is important and it is inherit to our institutional mission that our students have the skill sets that the workplace is requiring.”