Scalable, Systematic, and Holistic Approach to Internship Quality Enhancement

Principal Investigator: 
John Ferris, associate professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech

Co-Principal Investigators: 
Jeff Pittges, professor, Artis College of Science and Technology, Radford University; Kimberly Filer, Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), Virginia Tech; Heather Bradford, Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), Virginia Tech; Laura Freeman, director, Intelligent Systems Lab, Virginia Tech Hume Center; Joseph Simpson, Management, Virginia Tech

Project Description: 
Internship experiences can vary widely—students may not get the experiences they need for their future careers and employers may miss out on top recruits. This project will close the gap of internship experiences for students and employers by creating a systematic, holistic, and scalable approach to improving the quality of internships. The research team will assess students and businesses throughout an internship to create “measures of success” metrics. A scalable proof-of-concept will be developed and include: a set of student/business assessments from cybersecurity workforce experiences (internships), a roadmap to scale this project across the commonwealth to enhance students’ essential skills to enter the cybersecurity workforce, and a website with best practices and resources to help employers increase and improve student internships.