Evaluation of an Interview-Based Internship Class in the Construction Management Curriculum: A Case Study of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract

Internships have been shown to be impactful tools to connect students’ learning in academia with real-world industrial needs. To help the students to get more out of their internship experience, some universities provide a summer internship class in which students do class assignments based on their experiences during their internship. There have been numerous studies on the benefits of internships. However, the benefits of a potential internship class for students in construction management (CM) programs at universities have not yet been investigated. This paper demonstrates the structure of an interview-based internship class and investigates its effectiveness. We have focused on the CM program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) as a case study. We sent online questionnaires to the intern students who took the class, students’ mentors, and the professors who taught the class. The results indicate that despite some challenges to meet the requirements of the class, the students, their mentors, and the professor found the class beneficial. The results of this paper are expected to help CM programs with the establishment and improvement of internship classes in their curriculum.

Internship Experiences

“…Guler and Mert declares that the civil engineering students are keen to participate in practical training programs during their period of education and that civil engineering departments should update the theoretical courses taking into consideration the practical applications [3]. According to Karji, internships have been shown to be impactful tools to connect students' learning in academia with real-world industrial needs [4].…”

Exploring Careers at Public Gardens: A Long-term Evaluation of The Morton Arboretum Public Horticulture Internship

“…Since these programs require a significant amount of time and effort from both the intern and employer, it benefits both parties to ensure these programs meet their goals via a structured method of evaluation. Methods to evaluate internships have ranged from program satisfaction surveys from the perspective of the intern (Dommeyer et al, 2016), from the intern and supervisor (Rogers, 1993;Zehr and Korte, 2020), or the intern, supervisor, and faculty mentor (Karji et al, 2020).…”

“…Other studies have focused less on program development per se, instead determining skills and credentials desired for entry-level positions with the goal of training more qualified graduates (Chase and Masberg, 2008). Considering the results of these studies, internships are generally highly rated (Dommeyer et al, 2016), but intern experiences can be marred by unclear expectations, lack of context, insufficient onboarding (Rogers, 1993), inexperienced supervisors (Zehr and Korte, 2020), or lack of supervisor's availability (Karji et al, 2020;Rogers, 1993). McCarroll (2017) echoes much of these same sentiments; encouraging supervisors to be prepared, welcoming, communicative, set a positive example, and assume nothing when taking on interns, helping to support them as they begin the first step in their career.…”

Exploring Construction Students’ Perceptions of Smart Buildings

“…The industry is frequently reported to suffer from a lack of skilled workers. Universities and colleges can fill this gap by providing quality education for construction management students through workshops, internships, and curricular courses (Karji et al, 2020). Despite the fact, building-related programs fall short of providing new but required subjects such as smart building.…”