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More creative “internships”?

tl/dr: Concrete: think about spending a summer at another school rather than an industrial lab, doing an internship outside of the summer, and/or an internship that’s not publication-centric.  General: creatively structure your grad school activities to get experiences, skills, information, fun, and people that you want.

When I was a grad student at Minnesota, folks there, at Michigan, and at CMU got a joint grant that led to great collaboration around social science and design, including the Building Successful Online Communities book (preprint chapters are downloadable here).

Part of the challenge of being on that team, especially early on, was that we were both distributed geographically and from different disciplines. This made it harder to figure out how to work together, transfer knowledge, and plan activities where everyone got value from them. This is common in (interdisciplinary) teams, and we used standard strategies such as bringing the team together for regular retreats and having virtual meetings and seminars.

These were helpful, but one idea we kicked around was an emissary model in which folks from place X would spend substantial time at place Y. I saw this as a big potential win: a distance collaboration could go turbo [1] and its members could get cross-training in other disciplines, experience different work styles and cultures, expand their professional networks, and maybe get letter writers from other institutions. All of these seem like pretty good outcomes.

So the specific question is: how could something like this work? Professors do sabbaticals and undergrads do REUs, but AFAIK it’s super-rare for PhD students [2]. My analogy is “academic internship”, with variations compared to a traditional industry experience. Without NDAs and intellectual property issues it might be easier for the advisor to be an active collaborator–which might in turn simplify funding, allowing the advisor to pay a summer stipend or RAship as they might do anyways. I’m sure there are reasons why this is more complex than I think, and I’d be happy to hear them in the comments, but it feels like something worth exploring.

The more general question is: how can students think more creatively about how to structure grad school experiences? Victoria Sosik and Xuan Zhao are doing spring and summer industrial internships this year; other students I work with are also thinking about the possibility of semester vs. summer internships. Not all companies are able to do this, but some are, and some might welcome it–maybe worth thinking, and asking, about? [3]

It’s also not necessary to turn every internship into publications, especially if you’re considering non-academic career options [4]. Victoria’s done one pure product, one mostly research, and one balanced internship; Xuan is doing one of each. This will give them a lot of information about academia vs. industry, and if industry, which flavors taste good.

So, that’s my story today: think about creative ways to structure your internships and other grad school activities to help you get the experiences, skills, information, fun, and people that you want to be part of your (academic) life.

What’s your story about this idea?

— Dan

[1] Not to be confused with “Going Turbo” from Wreck-It Ralph, which I recently saw and loved.

[2] I would love to hear stories about this working, or not working, if you’ve done it or sponsored it.

[3] From a student funding point of view, it’s like supporting yourself for a semester (especially if you can get low tuition through an in absentia or on leave kind of status).

[4] Which you should do; alternative academic careers can be necessary, lucrative, rewarding, and/or fun.

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  1. I think there’s two separate things here.

    First, I think doing stints at other academic institutions is a great idea. It’s one of the things I really like about the Danish Ph.D system, where, I believe, every student has to spend a year or so at another academic or industry institution. I’d love to see Cornell IS think seriously about putting that into the Ph.D requirements.

    Second, I’ve always been a fan of off-cycle/semester/longer internships. Three months is a very short time to get anything done. My summer intern this year starts a week after CHI and goes until September. 🙂

    Third, I think it’s useful to remember that one of the reasons to do an internship is to get a feel for what it’s like to work at a particular company, and I think that’s not to be knocked. I’d like to believe that for a top quality Ph.D student both industry and academic are worth considering, but while Ph.D students have at least a vague idea what it’s like to be a professor, it’s often much harder to get a sense for what day to day life is in an industrial research lab. I think that’s worth building into the grad school experience.

    Jofish

  2. Oh, I’m a fan of industrial internships too as a way to get different experiences and to see if that’s a good path for you. Many research-oriented professors I think also have limited experience about what it might be like to work at (industry/a teaching school/a university in another country). Getting that kind of advice and experience is a big win I think.

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