Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 3586

Faculty Internships in Industry*

Claudia House Nashville State Technical Institute/SEATEC

Faculty internships in business and industrial settings serve both the academic and the business communities. The Tennessee Exemplary Faculty for Advanced Technological Education (TEFATE) project, funded by the National Science Foundation, utilized faculty internships as a fundamental component in two of its focus areas: (1) faculty development and (2) instructional product/case study development. The mission of the TEFATE internship program is to assist in the development of faculty who are prepared to utilize a team-oriented and cross-disciplinary approach to curriculum development and delivery.

Interdisciplinary teams made up of faculty from mathematics, English, science, Engineering Technology, and Information Systems were formed at each of five participating two-year colleges in Tennessee. Partners from Engineering Technology departments at four-year colleges in the southeast, secondary schools (Tech Prep), and industry augmented these faculty teams.

Establishing, implementing, and assessing faculty internships in the TEFATE project yielded many lessons. Pilot internships allowed project staff to identify the challenges to be faced in conducting an internship program, as well as techniques that were successful in developing and managing internship activities. Faculty served in various internships at sites including Nortel, Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Smith and Nephew, Lockheed Martin and MCI. TEFATE interns performed a variety of tasks for the host industries including training, establishing Intranets, installing cabling, conducting marketing studies, network administration, and designing networks.

The philosophy driving faculty internships, regardless of the type of business or activity, is based in the belief that the best curricula are developed in an environment where the faculty have • participated directly in that business, • utilized the business’s cutting-edge technology, and • applied this knowledge with the highest possible academic standards.

It is important that both industry and faculty understand the issues involved and share ownership of the internship and the benefits that derive from it. One way to foster this shared ownership environment is to compile a list of the benefits to the various parties

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

House, C. (1999, June), Faculty Internships In Industry Paper presented at 1999 Annual Conference, Charlotte, North Carolina. 10.18260/1-2--7671