Contract
Research Internship
Your final grade in this internship course will be determined by your advisor based on weighing the written evaluation from your supervisor and the paper you will write in the fall semester about your internship experience. Although there is no minimum or maximum word count on your paper, you are required to address each of the criteria listed under “Required Components” (below) in a thoughtful and reflective way. You may consider this document to be an informal contract whose terms require you to meet these criteria in order to earn a grade consistent with your expectations.
You may submit a rough draft of your internship paper to your advisor by the middle of the Fall semester (the specific date should be jointly agreed upon). Your advisor will provide you with comments and strategies you might employ to improve your paper. The deadline for the final version of your paper is the first day of finals week.
Required Components
Prepare a scientific paper based on your research
This paper should be similar in form to an AMS journal article although it is not necessarily expected to be at a level suitable for publication. All of the major components of a research article should be present (abstract, introduction, methods, results, summary, references, etc.).
Internship Essay
- You should provide a separate, brief essay regarding the personal impact of your internship. Discuss the reasons you chose this particular internship. You may want to frame these reasons in terms of your academic and career goals. Discuss the type of research performed at your hosting institution and why this appealed to you.
- Describe your daily responsibilities and routines, offering some personal insights as to how they met (or did not meet) the expectations you had before the internship began.
- Reflective writing is a very important component of your internship essay because it forces you to examine how the knowledge and experience you gained during your internship have impacted your attitudes and understanding of your overall career and academic goals. Although you will discover that reflective writing poses a real challenge, closely examining your internship from a personal point of view constitutes the final step in the process. The reflective writing component is not about atmospheric science. Rather, it is all about your personal insights and personal appraisal of your internship (the deeper your personal insights, the better). For example, did the internship solidify your career plans or cause you to reassess your plans? As you tell your reflective story, try your best to provide specific examples that helped to shape your attitudes and understanding.