One of the unique benefits of an internship is your growth in navigating professional settings. Even though many of our courses have applied learning, you are still working mostly with your classmates and instructors on projects. Internships have you immersed in professional settings and growing in your ability to work with professionals, not just classmates.
To qualify for an internship at a minimum, you must be a full COM major of junior or senior status (at least 60 semester hours completed) with a minimum overall GPA of 2.5.
Once an application is submitted and reviewed by the faculty supervisor the student is notified of eligibility.
When reviewing the application the faculty supervisor will be looking at your coursework in the discipline area that supports your desired internship. You then pass through the second phase of the selection process involving interviews with the department's faculty internship director and agency supervisors.
"My advice to future interns would be to do your research. This includes researching which organization you want to intern at, finding out what exactly you will be doing as an intern, knowing what is expected of you while completing an internship, and what potential assignments you will be working on.
You will get more out of the experience if you are well prepared and have chosen the right agency. Also, doing research is a valuable and necessary skill at most of the intern positions offered through the Communication Studies department."
-Allison, Former COM Intern
Students may intern at many organizations that reflect the breadth of our department. For example, internship agencies include radio and TV stations, public relations firms, Fortune 500 corporations, speech pathology/audiology rehabilitation centers, government and civic institutions, entertainment production companies, and a myriad of others. Qualified students may also initiate the approval process for a new agency, for example an organization in their hometown should they seek a summer internship outside of Wilmington.
While most agencies are located in the vicinity of Wilmington, students have completed internships at sites including CMT/MTV Networks (Nashville, TN), Comcast Entertainment Group (L.A., CA), VH1 (New York City, NY), WESH-TV an NBC affiliate (Orlando, FL) and Carolina Medical Center (Charlotte, NC).
Students may not convert existing not-for-credit internships, volunteer activities, jobs, etc. into a for-credit internship. While these are valuable, they are distinct from internships for academic credit.
"My advice to any COM student is to start completing internships during your junior year. I hate that I waited until my last semester to do my internship. I would have loved to complete multiple internships to gain more experience!"
- Jason, Former COM Intern
To complete a 3 credit hour internship, a student must:
These projects focus on their experiences, address challenges and chart a course for the remainder of their time with sponsoring agencies.
Student interns are encouraged to collect completed products as materials for their portfolios to be created in their COM 400 Discipline Capstone course. A student intern's performance is evaluated by both the agency supervisor and faculty internship director. In accordance with university guidelines, internships are graded PASS/FAIL.
Click the link below to join a Canvas course that includes the application form, a catalog of internship sites and more. NOTE: Do not contact sites in the catalog directly! You will discuss your desired internship sites with the internship instructor as part of the application process.