AIFS 296 – 299: International Internship

Credits: 3 – 6

Prerequisite: Sophomore or junior standing or with advisor approval

School of Record Articulation: 2000 Level General Elective

Students will engage in a work experience with organizations in business, industry, government, not-for- profit, or education. The experience is designed to be relevant to the student’s academic pursuits, personal development, and professional preparation. The internship provides students with the opportunity to gain experience in workplace settings and to translate classroom learning into practice. The internship is a substantive career development experience. It can be paid or unpaid with the intent of the experience being for the student to be exposed to business ideas and concepts while being mentored. Doing analysis, contributing to decisions, and communicating meaningful ideas should form the bulk of the work, although some low skill work (for example, data entry and making phone calls) can be a part of the assignment. At the end of the internship experience, students will be able to reflect on their personal and professional growth and begin seeing themselves on their career path.

Course Coding:

AIFS 296: Three Credit International Internship Summer

AIFS 297: Three Credit International Internship Semester

AIFS 298: Six Credit International Internship Summer

AIFS 299: Six Credit International Internship Semester

AIFS 301: Global Workforce and Leadership Development

Credits: 3           

Prerequisite: Sophomore of junior standing or with advisor approval

School of Record Articulation: 3000 Level Management

By successfully completing this course, students will be better prepared to enter the global workforce as leaders in their career fields by engaging with their own personal work habits and leadership styles. This course is designed to help students gain an understanding of Career Readiness Competencies, as defined by NACE. Learning about and developing these attributes will increase students’ marketability to future global employers and contribute to both their leadership capacity and their ability to succeed professionally in the globalized economy.

AIFS 302: Intercultural Communications in a Global Workplace

Credits: 3           

Prerequisite: Sophomore of junior standing or with advisor approval

School of Record Articulation: 3000 Level Communication

Students will learn to identify culture, cultural differences, how culture manifests in the workplace and communication in a global market. They will build their own intercultural competence in terms of their own awareness, skills, and knowledge as a necessary basis for learning about communication in the global workplace, especially as it may be applied to their host country where their experience is taking place. Students will be given a basic introduction into how to research a country’s culture to help make sense of their experience interning in their host culture. They will learn how to recognize their own cultural lens and to create comparative studies of how cultural difference and communication styles manifest in the global workplace. Through course activities and their own research, students will learn how to identify and adapt to new professional settings. The Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) Intercultural Knowledge and Competence VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) Rubric will be used to assess students’ level of achievement in learning outcomes of the Deardorff Process Model of Intercultural Competence.