Utah Valley University's Presidential Internship: Its History, Purpose, and Potential Success
Keywords:
Presidential Internship, History, Potential Success, Purpose, James S. McGraw, Bowling Green State University, Tanner Anderson, Nick Varney, Ryan Stephenson, Elizabeth Bowen, Brooke Schroeder, Khaliun Amarjargal, Utah Valley University, KC Hooker, Arizona State University, McKenna Marchant, University of Utah, President's Cabinet, President, Chief of Staff, Chief Inclusion Officer, Vice Presidents, Internship, Mentoring, Impact, Projects, Executive, Administrators, Mission, Effectiveness, Qualitative, Results, Professional, Personal DevelopmentAbstract
Utah Valley University’s Presidential Internship is promoted as the premier internship experience on its campus. Nine students are paired with members of the President’s Cabinet (i.e., President, Chief of Staff, Chief Inclusion Officer, and six Vice Presidents). The internship offers these students one-on-one mentorship, high impact projects, and lessons in leadership by executive administrators at the university. This article seeks to introduce the model and mission of the internship and introduces the results of a qualitative pilot study to evaluate the effectiveness in meeting its mission. The qualitative results indicate that past interns found high impact projects to be important experiences in leadership, professional, and personal development, even above and beyond the one-on-one mentorship.
