Paper Guidelines - 444

The Internship Paper is required of every student taking a Herberger Business School Internship for credit. Please check the Requirements section of this website for the deadline. Each paper will be reviewed by the Internship Office and by the appropriate Department Chair. The student must check back with the Internship Office to determine whether his or her paper has been approved, or whether changes must be made and the paper resubmitted. Students are required to review the comments made by the Department Chair and sign-off on the paper after such review.

If the paper is approved as written, it will be returned to the Internship Office and retained in the student's file. If the paper needs to be revised, the student may be required to meet with the Department Chair in order to discuss the revisions necessary. The student must submit the original version of the paper, the cover sheet, and the revised version of the paper to the Internship Office which will, in turn, resubmit it to the Department Chair. When the paper is accepted by the Department Chair, it will be forwarded to the Internship office and placed in the student's file.

If the student has signed a consent form, a copy of the paper approved by the Department Chair will be placed in the firm file for the firm where the internship took place.

The following general guidelines should help in writing your paper.

1. Each paper must include discussion of the following topics:
   (please include separate headings for each of these sections in your paper)
   • A brief description of the firm or organization sponsoring the internship, including the name of the organization, historical information, type of industry, geographical location, internal structure (departments or divisions - an organizational chart if available), your department or division, number of employees, and the dates of your internship.
   • A week-by-week description of what you did during the internship, including discussion of any orientation offered by the company, other training sessions, meetings attended, projects worked on, etc. If similar activities were completed each week, describe them in the first week performed and state that it was a weekly duty. Where appropriate, a student may organize this section into a discussion of the activities or projects worked on throughout the internship rather than a weekly review.
   • a listing of the classes which helped you during your internship. Do not limit your discussion to Herberger Business School classes. If there is additional course content that you wish had been convered in your Herberger Business School classses and which would have helped with your internship, please include that information as well.
   • Your overall impression of the internship experience. Include those parts that you thought were beneficial and those things you would try to change.
2. You may choose to add additional sections to your paper if they help describe your internship experience more completely. Appendices are optional. If you are in doubt about this, you might wish to discuss those concerns with your Department Chair.
3. The cover page should include the name of the company or organization where you interned, your name, the semester you interned, and the name of your particular internship course. (All of the internship courses are numbered 444 and are differentiated by the name of the department in which you are enrolled.) The paper must be typed and double-spaced. Section headings must be used within the paper to separate the different sections. It is suggested that you prepare the paper on computer and keep a copy on your computer in case you are asked by your Department Chair to make corrections to your original version. There is no mandatory length but the paper should adequately discuss each of the above-mentioned areas. Please be certain that the copy submitted is dark enough to be easily read. If necessary, photocopy to get it darker.
4. It is imperative that you proofread your work before submitting it to the Internship Office. Papers should be free of spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, and all other typographical errors. Please remember that the "Spellcheck" feature of most software packages tells you only whether word spellings are correct. It does not tell you if you have used the proper form of a word in a given context or if your sentence makes sense as written. Style is very subjective, but your goal should be to make the paper read as "smoothly" as possible with logical progressions from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph. If necessary, have a friend read through your paper to get another opinion. You might wish to consult a reference such as Elements of Style by Strunk and White, or make use of The Write Place in Riverview.
5. Please do not use plastic covers or permanently bind your internship paper prior to turning it in to the Internship Office. The paper should simply be stapled in the upper left-hand corner.