In 2019, Foothill College Workforce Development nurtured an idea: What if we could remove one of the biggest barriers students face when entering the workforce with a low-stakes opportunity to gain experience and an internship? Students want to work, but industry professionals want to hire those who already have experience. The flip side of this scenario is that companies won’t hire those without experience and students can’t gain experience if no one will hire them. Our goal became providing students with work experience and an opportunity to explore career opportunities that they wouldn't normally consider. The result is Foothill College’s Springternship.

What Is Springternship?

Springternship is an intensive one-week virtual micro-internship that takes place during spring break and provides learning opportunities rooted in Dewey’s theory of experience (Giles, 1987). Students are matched with a community partner to explore work in a field they may or may not have considered before and learn about different career pathways and opportunities. The community partners not only provide work experience, but also serve as mentors, which adds a critical layer of support (Smith-Ruig, 2014). This micro-internship is open to students with or without employment history and in any major.

Students are purposefully matched with organizations in teams rather than individually to mirror real-world work teams and contribute to project-based learning, which helps to create global citizenship (Valencia-Forrester & Stewart, 2022). During class time, Foothill College instructor Miloni Gandhi, Ph.D., covers important skills for navigating the workplace, such as online and in-person personal branding, resume review, elevator pitch perfection, and networking.

Springterns have been agile, open to new ideas, and flexible, making the most of their placements. Student teams have tackled a number of complex global issues, including sanitation awareness in the COVID era, environmental conservation activism, leveraging social media and brand identity to increase user engagement, translating and publicizing a foreign film on immigration, and creating a real estate analysis of up and coming locations in Mexico. In the past five years, they have had the opportunity to work with amazing community partners, such as Farzana Nayani, Farzana Nayani Consulting and Training; Ramnath Chandrasekhar, National Geographic Explorer; Jerry Won, Just Like Media; Michelle Cho, Gladeo; Dr. Dayaprasad Kulkarni, Aarogya Seva Global Health Volunteer Alliance; Neetal Parekh, Innov8social; Gallery House, Palo Alto; Weingarten Children’s Foundation, Center for Hearing Research; Intact Pharmaceuticals; Palo Alto University Rotary Club Civil Discourse Project; and Ginger Bandoni, Besos de Angelica.

Dual Enrollment Springternship

We are also thrilled to have launched a special iteration of Springternship to commemorate our fifth year and capture another segment of students at our college: those who are dual enrolled. Working with the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District (MVLA) through the stewardship of Lynette Gillson, Ph.D., and Amber Woodward, M.A. Ed., we were able to offer an exclusive program for our dual enrolled students. Gillson said,

We were deeply appreciative when Dr. Gandhi suggested a collaboration between Foothill College and MVLA to bring the Springternship opportunity to MVLA students. The real-world skills our CTE students gained through these mini-internships reflect the work-based learning valued at MVLA.

Working with high schools creates opportunities for students to have their first internship completed by the time they become full-time college students, thus giving them an edge on campus jobs and future internships without an opportunity cost. According to Woodward,

This opportunity played a valuable role not only in furthering the strong partnership we have with Foothill College, but in the dedication to future opportunities for the students of MVLA. Students gained valuable insights from working with these companies and were able to develop and understand the types of skills employers are looking for in today’s job market in Santa Clara County. Not only did they learn these invaluable soft skills, but they also earned dual enrollment college credit, which puts them on the path to success for postsecondary college/career goals and beyond. We are excited to continue Springternship next year.

Micro-internships are accepted as a way to democratize access to internships (Wingard, 2019). However, Springternship also helps students with scaffolding support through classroom instruction that helps them process and reflect on their work-based learning experience and immediately transform it into something they can showcase for future work. In addition to learning basic technical, on-the-job skills, students also gain key communication skills in both written and verbal form; practice pitching and presenting, working in teams, managing their time, and working with partners around the world; and receive feedback. 

Here are a few takeaways from a student feedback survey that highlight the importance of working in teams and having mentors during Springternship:

• “My favorite part of Springternship was collaborating and communicating with my peers, especially new people who I hadn't known before. I thought that this was especially useful because we all had some common interest and we were working together to achieve a common goal.”
• “Thank you for taking the time to mentor me during this short internship. I learned so much during this time period and I believe that this was the best way that I could have spent my spring break.”
• “My favorite part of Springternship was making the presentation, as we saw all the research and interviews come together . . . and it helped show me how much I've learned through this whole experience.”

Foothill College looks forward to fostering continued collaboration between our community partners and connecting students with work-based experiential learning opportunities worldwide.

Watch this short video to learn more about Springtermship.

References

Giles, D. E. (1987). Dewey's theory of experience: Implications for service-learning. Journal of Cooperative Education, 27(2), 87-90.

Smith-Ruig, T. (2014). Exploring the links between mentoring and work-integrated learning. Higher Education Research & Development, 33(4), 769-778

Valencia-Forrester, F., & Stewart, H. (2022). Creating a fourth space for social impact collaborations across boundaries: Active project-based learning and internships for GC education. In S. Stanlick, & W. Szmodis (Eds.), Perspectives on lifelong learning and global citizenship: Beyond the classroom (pp. 57-76). Springer International.

Wingard, J. (2019, March 6). Why micro-internships will be the next big thing. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonwingard/2019/03/06/why-micro-internships-will-be-the-next-big-thing/?sh=3c42f02c700c

Miloni Gandhi, Ph.D., is an Internship for Credit and Global Studies instructor at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California.

Opinions expressed in Member Spotlight are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the League for Innovation in the Community College.