Supervisor Internship Guide

Welcome! This document contains important policy and procedural information about for-credit internships in Arts Management, including eligibility for credit, planning resources, academic expectations, student recruitment, and enrollment processes.

Table of Contents

Updated May 2024

Overview

Internships, defined as robust learning opportunities in which students gain professional experience under the guidance and mentorship of an expert in the field, are a core academic component of the College of Charleston's Arts Management curriculum. Arts Management majors and minors are required to complete a 120-hour (3 credit) internship during their junior or senior year as part of their program of study. Students may choose to participate in an internship during the fall, spring, or summer semesters, and they may complete more than one internship for credit.

It is the student's responsibility to secure an internship. The Arts Management Program does not place interns in specific settings. However, internships that are rich, immersive experiences, including those that are paid, have the best advantage of garnering student interest. These are experiences in which interns learn new technological skills, have access to meetings and other activities to observe the operations and governance of organizations and businesses, that provide learning and skill-based oversight by the internship site supervisor, and where the site supervisor and/or staff work closely with the student to fulfill their learning goals.

Working With Students

There are numerous ways for an organization to work with our students and provide hands-on opportunities for experiential learning, including:

Volunteer Opportunity

Are you looking for students to help with a short-term project or event? Fill out this form.

Paid part-time or contract work

Are you looking for a student to provide a service that is largely autonomous and requires existing skills and expertise? We strongly encourage you to offer this as a paid hourly or contract position as opposed to an internship. We are happy to talk with you about pay rates and structure, and we can share the opportunity directly with students. Send an email to Claire at celong@cofc.edu with the position description, and we will distribute it to our students and on our social media channels. You may also consider sharing the opportunity on Handshake to reach a broader campus audience.

Internship

Are you looking to train the next generation of arts managers and offer significant mentorship and guidance to undergraduate students? Has your organization hosted interns before? We would love to promote your opportunity to our students as a for-credit internship.

Supervisor Tip

Should you pay your intern? We always encourage paid internship positions when feasible to offset the many costs of unpaid work, including systemic injustice and access challenges, but you might actually be legally required to pay, especially if you are a for-profit company. Check out this Fact Sheet from the U.S. Department of Labor to check.

Eligibility for Credit

In order for an internship to be approved for course credit for Arts Management students, it must meet the following criteria:

1. It must be with an arts-oriented or music industry-oriented organization. 

To clarify, this means that the organization itself must be arts-oriented, not just the nature of the work the student is completing. The organization must fall within one of these categories:

  • Museums & Collections
  • Performing Arts
  • Visual Arts & Photography
  • Film, Radio, & Television
  • Design
  • Literary Arts
  • Arts Education
  • Creative Placemaking
  • Arts Agencies & Service Organizations
  • Music Industry

Retail, merchandising, hospitality-type internships with hotels, food service businesses, and non-arts-specific event planning, marketing, or other companies will NOT be approved for ARTM 400 or 401.

2. It must take place either virtually and/or in an office or professional work environment.

The internship should NOT take place in personal residences other than the student’s. Home studios are also not permitted. Virtual and semi-virtual internships are permitted.

3. The student must be able to work at least 120 total hours during the semester in which they are enrolled in the internship course.

4. The host organization must have had a formal internship program for at least one year.

This is for the benefit of both the student and the organization; an organization should have experience mentoring students before committing to hosting an academic internship.

5. The internship must provide opportunities for students to accomplish each of the following expected learning outcomes.

By the conclusion of the internship, the student will be able to:

  • Demonstrate effective skills in communication, strategic thinking, synthesis, and/or technology;
  • Apply relevant theories, principles, and knowledge related to the field of arts management;
  • Recognize professional environments and behavior, supervisory structures, task management, and evaluation in the workplace;
  • Obtain a record of work experience

6. The organization and the internship must meet the criteria of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), including:

  • The internship must be an extension of the classroom: a learning experience that provides an opportunity for students to apply knowledge gained in the classroom. It must not be simply to advance the operations of the employer or be the work that a regular employee would routinely perform.
  • There are clearly defined learning objectives/goals related to the professional goals of the student’s academic coursework.
  • There are resources, equipment, and facilities provided by the host employer that support learning objectives/goals.
  • The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under the close observation of a regular employee – the Internship Site Supervisor.
  • There is supervision by the Internship Site Supervisor, a professional with expertise and educational and/or professional background in the field of nonprofit, for-profit, arts, cultural, music industry, visual arts, or entertainment management.
  • The employer provides the training and derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern. Occasionally, the operations may actually be impeded.

Supervisor Tip 

If your organization or the internship position you would like to promote to students does not meet all of this criteria, we can still review it and potentially promote it as a non-credit opportunity. 

Preparing for an Internship

The most successful internship experiences are those with clearly defined learning objectives, communication plans, structured hourly schedules, and routine feedback. Please follow these steps to prepare to host an Arts Management internship:

  1. Define the learning outcomes and create a position description for the internship experience. What will the intern do that will contribute to their learning? Will the internship be paid or offer perks like free tickets or parking? How will the intern’s schedule be structured? How will you communicate with the student? Review these Career Center resources for additional insight.
  2. Prepare for significant mentorship and training components of the internship. What guidance and professional development opportunities will you offer? Examples include regular check-ins, staff meetings, software training, networking opportunities, career guidance, job shadowing, resume review, etc.
  3. Prepare your application and interview process. What specific qualifications and skills should an individual in this role possess? How should students apply? What materials should they submit? Will you set an application deadline or keep it open until filled? Will you conduct interviews via phone, Zoom, or in person?
  4. Share your internship opportunity with our students. Submit the Arts Management Internship Posting form to share details of the position. We will review your submission, and if approved, we will share it on our Internship Opportunities page and via email to students.
  5. Accept applications, conduct interviews, and select an intern. You may select more than one intern as long as you are able to guarantee 120 hours of work for each student.

Supervisor Tip

In order to qualify for credit, an intern must be enrolled in the beginning of the semester in which they complete the internship. Keep this in mind when setting application deadlines and selecting interns; we recommend listing the deadline as “open until filled” to allow for the most flexibility. Aim to have your intern selected by early August for the Fall, early December for the Spring, and early May for the Summer.

Academic Course Information

1. Once a student has been offered and accepted an internship position, they will contact our program to begin the enrollment process in the internship course. The initial paperwork is completed via a DocuSign workflow. (See DocuSign Instructions.)

2. To enroll in a for-credit internship course, the DocuSign packet must be submitted by the Drop/Add deadline of the semester in which the student intends to complete the internship.

Summer 2024 DocuSign Packet Deadline: Rolling until June 30, 2024
Fall 2024 DocuSign Packet Deadline: August 26, 2024 
Spring 2025 DocuSign Packet Deadline: January 14, 2025

**Remember, an intern may not begin his/her/their internship until all paperwork has been submitted and the student has been enrolled in the internship course.

3. Along with completing 120 hours at their internship either virtually or onsite, students will also complete requirements for the online course by:

  • submitting online journals,
  • completing a final paper,
  • submitting a revised resume with a description of the internship experience, and
  • submitting a final self-evaluation form as part of the academic course requirements for ARTM 400 or ARTM 401.
At the conclusion of the internship, the site supervisor will be sent an evaluation form to complete and submit to the Arts Management Program.

DocuSign Instructions

Our enrollment process for internships is a paperless DocuSign workflow.

  1. The Arts Management Program will send the DocuSign packet to you, the site supervisor, via email with the subject, “"DocuSign: Arts Management Internship Forms."
  2. Open the email and click "Review Documents." You do not need a DocuSign account to complete and sign the forms. Depending on whether or not you've used DocuSign before, you'll need to consent to using an electronic signature.
  3. Click the yellow "Start" button at the top left to begin completing your designated portion of the forms.
  4. Once you've completed the packet, click "Finish," and the form will automatically route to the Director of Experiential Learning for review and approval, followed by the student and our Program Director.
  5. Once everyone has signed, all parties will receive a final copy of the documents.
  6. We will submit the forms to the Registrar's Office, and they will register the student in the internship course. After a student has been registered, they are permitted to begin the internship.

Expectations for Supervisors During the Internship

Thank you so very much for hosting an arts management intern and committing to mentoring and training the next generation of arts managers! This section provides a summary of the expectations for site supervisors throughout the internship experience.

INTERNSHIP REQUIREMENTS

All students must work a total of 120 hours during the academic semester in order to receive course credit. The students will submit final assignments related to the internship on Reading Day, which is the day between the last day of classes and the first day of final exams (Fall: late November; Spring: late April; Summer: varies by term). Your intern’s hours should either be complete or close to complete by that date.

In addition to fulfilling their responsibilities virtually or onsite, these hours may be earned through professional development opportunities, training, networking with your professional contacts, attending meetings, and other learning activities. We encourage you to incorporate your intern(s) into as many aspects of your organization's daily life as possible. As we often say, internships are a learning experience for students and a teaching opportunity for supervisors. Thank you for your effort!

ACADEMIC COURSE

Though the vast majority of the work for the internship course occurs onsite and/or remotely with your guidance and instruction for a minimum of 120 hours, the students also take an online course concurrently with the internship experience. This course is administered through our learning management system, OAKS. In addition to journals and professional development resources, some assignments include "activity prompts" for students to complete and write about. Some of these that you might want to be aware of include:

  • An initial meeting with you to provide feedback on goals that they set at the beginning of the internship and to review their schedule for the semester.
  • An informational interview with someone else at your organization. If you are the only employee at your organization, the students have been instructed to ask you for recommendations of another contact, e.g. a board member, close community partner, etc.
  • A midpoint discussion/evaluation meeting that they will schedule with you halfway through the semester.
    • Note: we will also send you a midpoint evaluation form halfway through the internship. This is an informal evaluation and will not be calculated into the intern's final grade.

We will also send you a final evaluation form a few weeks before the end of the semester, which will constitute a significant portion of the intern's grade.

CONTINUED FEEDBACK + REPORTING CONCERNS

As part of the mentorship component of internships, we hope that you will establish a culture of frequent and regular communication and feedback with your intern, including clear discussion of your expectations related to communication. As you know, an internship is intended to be an engaging learning experience for the student and an opportunity to learn about professionalism and the working world in a safe environment. In some cases, this internship is the first professional experience that a student has in their field of study.

That being said, should any issues or concerns arise with your intern, including frequent tardiness or absences, missing deadlines, inadequate performance, etc., please address it with the student directly first. If you are still experiencing any issues, please contact Claire Long via email. She will connect you with the student's faculty advisor, and we will make a plan together to mitigate any concerns you may have.

VIRTUAL INTERNSHIP RESOURCES

If you are planning to incorporate remote work into the semester, please review the following virtual/semi-virtual internship resources, including an abbreviated version of a presentation given by Kristin Wichmann of the CofC Career Center. Even if your internship is mostly in-person, the material is helpful for planning for inevitable disruptions.

Thank you to Kristin Wichmann (Experiential Learning Coordinator, Career Center) for compiling this list of resources!

Thank you so much for all that you do and for playing such a vital role in the professional lives of our students! We know that hosting an intern is quite an undertaking, and we are so grateful for your efforts and willingness to guide our students.