Public Administration Internships
The Master of Public Administration (MPA) program requires that students take a six-credit internship, unless they already are employed full-time. The MPA Internship is POLI-7920. MPA Internships are administered by the Director of Internships and Placement, Dr. Cynthia Bowling. She can be contacted at:
334-844-6152 or bowlicj@auburn.edu
The internship is designed to accomplish two primary objectives. The first is for the students to have a practical experience in the world of public administration, to immerse themselves in the profession. The second is for them to practice applying the knowledge from MPA course work to a concrete situation and to report the results in an “analytic paper.” Students generally do much better on the first objective than on the second. That is, they work diligently on the tasks assigned and receive good evaluations from their agency supervisors. On the other hand, they often do not start the analytic paper early enough and do not identify and apply the relevant literature.
Contract
Each student is required to sign a contract with his or her supervisor in the relevant agency which states the supervisor’s agreement to participate in the MPA Internship Program and to complete the Internship Evaluation Form at the end of the internship period. The job description for the internship should be written as clearly and completely as possible. The contract between the supervisor and student will then be approved and signed by the Internship Director.
Weekly Journal
By Monday noon of each week of the internship, each intern is required to submit, via email, a log of the total hours worked the preceding week, a summary of the internship activities during the preceding week, and a description of the tasks and goals for the upcoming week. The last paragraph of the journal entry should relate something in the internship to the content of an MPA core course that the intern has taken. For example, you might witness a planning or budgeting process and characterize it as comprehensive or incremental with references to appropriate literature from your coursework. The goal here is to have you thinking about the link between your courses and your internship experience. The Weekly Journal should be submitted to: bowlicj@auburn.edu. Unless you request otherwise, the report will be circulated to all our MPA students completing internships that semester to help build an understanding of how theory and practice go together.
Analytic Paper
Finally, an analytic paper (5-7 pages) is also required. The analytic paper should relate the internship experience to a particular theoretical issue in public administration and requires that you read and apply to the internship a book or set of six articles (excluding required texts from your courses) regarding public administration. Thus, you should start thinking about what this issue will be fairly early in your internship. It is probably easiest to first pick a specific course (e.g. organization theory, policy, program evaluation, etc.) and then look at how the issues treated in it are handled in your agency and organization. The course text and syllabus, in addition, can serve as a good inspiration for selecting the book to read for this project. The project and book/articles must be approved by the Internship Director before the internship is half completed. The paper itself is due by the start of final exam week for the semester in which the internship is being taken.
Grading
Supervisor’s Evaluation 50%
Weekly Journal 30%
Analytic Paper 20%
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Last updated July 1, 2007