December 1999 — Features
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A Three-way Partnership for Learning: On-Campus Electronic Internships
This article describes an ongoing educational partnership between Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company (FFIC) and California State University-Chico (CSUC). The core of the partnership is an on-campus internship program that: allows the university to defer expenses; allows FFIC to gain an on-campus presence; and lets students obtain real world experiences. The paper reports the partnership by positioning experiences with the partnership within key indicators of a student learning environment.
This article describes an ongoing educational partnership between Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company (FFIC) and California State University-Chico (CSUC). The core of the partnership is an on-campus internship program that: allows the university to defer expenses; allows FFIC to gain an on-campus presence; and lets students obtain real world experiences. The paper reports the partnership by positioning experiences with the partnership within key indicators of a student learning environment.
At the heart of the model is a learning partnership whereby the teacher identifies what needs to be learned and the student helps identify the means by which their learning occurs. Significantly, both sides of this union must recognize their obligations to the partnership. For example, the teacher creates a learning environment in which the student participates.
Earlier proponents of the model, Chickering and Gamson (1987), propose guidelines for introducing student learning into undergraduate education as "seven principles." The American Association of Higher Education (AAHE 1996) extended this list by adding five more "principles." They then divided all twelve into three groupings based around organizational culture, curriculum and instruction. Table 1 represents a subset of these principles that serve both as the objectives of the learning environment and as a means to evaluate our environment in a later section of this paper.
Internships and co-ops represent another area of promise to address the concern of the skill mismatch suggested in the business school curricula. These are programs that move students off-campus and put them in a real-world, business environment for a period of time. Today, these programs are obvious recruiting devices for the sponsor program, but also lend themselves to opportunities for education and learning.
Endorsement of using these programs as a means of education can be found in the Social Work Education Model. Here Calloway and Beckstead (1997) specifically suggest incorporating into the education offered business students, the fundamental idea of internships as prescribed within the Social Work model. Their analysis further identified three main components of the model: philosophical foundation; faculty, student and community involvement; and program structure. The philosophy component provides the underpinning model. In this case, it is the integration of classroom learning and fieldwork. The involvement component describes the roles each of the players undertake; the faculty director as project administrator; the student as an active learner and the sponsoring agency as the enabling agent. Finally, the program structure component describes how the program is implemented.
