Internships in Applied Humanistic Anthropology

   Like all humanists, anthropologists have an extremely broad purview. Yet anthropology students often have trouble seeing job possibilities outside of academia. True, few job ads are explicitly calling for anthropologists to apply, but the skills that anthropologists possess—critical thinking, cultural literacy, the ability to analyze complex questions, persuasive writing—are in high demand. Unfortunately, most students have very limited exposure to what kinds of jobs are available to them in the applied sector (e.g. market research, research and design consultant). This is even more true for humanistic anthropologists and those with M.A. rather than Ph.D. degrees. Whereas someone with a masters in archaeology might find a position with a cultural resource management (CRM) firm or a forensic anthropologist might find work with a medical examiner, students with more abstract/theoretical orientations to the discipline often have a harder time envisioning these possibilities. Furthermore, in our experience at Tech, few of our M.A. students possess the professionalism or know-how to navigate the job market successfully. By designing an internship program that gives students real-world experience in applied anthropology, and by structuring this program to included sustained mentoring by the faculty applicants, we hope that students will graduate with the confidence to pursue a broad range of career paths.
   Fall 2019: With the assistance of the graduate assistant , we will search the literature on applied anthropology careers and do research on leading applied anthropology programs to compile a list of career options that seem viable for students graduating from our program (i.e. students with masters' level experience in 3-fields of anthropology). Applied Anthropology: Unexpected Spaces, Topics and Methods, for instance, in which one of the applicants has a chapter, outlines a number of fields in which anthropologists have unexpectedly but successfully found a niche (e.g. faculty development, aerospace engineering, veteran services). The University of Northern Arizona is a leading program in applied anthropology where students may opt to complete an internship in lieu of a thesis. Researching where their students complete internships can give us ideas for developing our own program.
   Spring 2020: During this semester, we will approach organizations/businesses within a two-hour radius of Lubbock to explore the possibilities of placing short-term interns (8-weeks; 10-15 hours per week) with them during the following year. Much of this legwork will be executed by the GA. The faculty applicants will work with the anthropology program and SASW department to determine how to best run these internships. In the long term, we would like for this to be a credit-bearing graduate seminar; however, for its first iteration, it might be best to offer it as an optional program. This will allow us to manipulate the cap of the program based on how many businesses/organizations are willing to host interns. During this semester we will also need to consult with the legal department to determine if a memorandum of understanding needs to be drafted between the university and the partnering institutions, or if the students can complete their internships in a less formal manner.
   Fall 2020: During the fall of our second year, based on the feedback we receive from our department, we will design the course/seminar. Following the research done by pedagogical experts such as Dewey, Mezirow, and Kolb, we know that reflective writing helps students make meaning out of experiential learning opportunities. There is also strong evidence to suggest that reflective writing encourages the development of metacognitive skills and self-regulated learning, which are essential competencies for humanities students seeking to translate their skills into a marketable profile. Therefore, whichever form our course/seminar takes, regular reflective writing assignments (e.g. blogs or journals) will be a central focus. Weekly or bimonthly meetings will provide the faculty fellows with the opportunity to monitor the interns' progress and provide a space in which the interns can learn from one another's experiences. Instructional content will also include things such as professionalism, networking, and how to conduct a non-academic job search. We will ask the RA to help in assembling readings for the syllabus and handling administrative issues related to the internships (e.g. tracking interns' hours, making sure they turn in blogs, etc.). We will also submit an application to the IRB this semester to secure permission for conducting a pre/post assessment on students' knowledge of and attitudes towards applied anthropology careers and for doing a text analysis of their reflective writing assignments. Beginning no later than October, we will also begin advertising the course/seminar. In late November, the RA will contact the organizations/businesses that agreed to host interns to confirm that they are still willing and able to serve as partners. Spring 2021: Students will spend the first two weeks of the semester being introduced to the structure of the course and discussing basics of professionalism (a skillset that should be explicitly taught so as to avoid privileging those who have already mastered this 'hidden curriculum'). During week 2, students will select their preferred internship site based on the list of options prepared in spring 2020. This is when we will administer the pre-term assessment. In weeks 3 and 4, students will be responsible for contacting the organizations/businesses where they hope to intern and coming to an agreement with individuals at that organization for setting their start/finish dates, their hours, days to be worked, etc. Weeks 5-13 will be dedicated to completing the internship with once-weekly seminar meetings being dedicated to sharing experiences, troubleshooting, etc. This timeframe allows students to take one week off for spring break should they choose to do so. The final two weeks of the term will involve discussions of what was learned, how students can translate these experiences into symbolic capital on the job market, and how to best situate themselves for a non-academic job search. During week 15 we will administer a post-term assessment. This data will be analyzed and prepared for publication in a journal such as Practicing Anthropology, to be submitted no later than December of 2021.