Internship Lightning Talks: HIST 499 students celebrate, recap experiences
Introduction
On Tuesday April 29th, UIC students convened in UH950 to talk about their internship experiences for an in-person and virtual audience of fellow interns, intern supervisors, prospective future interns, and the History Department community. This Spring, students in HIST 499 interned at the Chicago History Muesum, Hull-House Museum, UIC University Archives, UIC Daley Library, Midwest Nursing History Research Center, National Hellenic Museum, nonprofit ONE Northside, and BRicK Partners consulting. In this series of short lightning talk presentations, students shared the wide variety of work the took on as interns: creating social media content, curatorial and acrhival work, crafting lesson plans and field trips for teachers, researching and shaping affordable housing policies and collaborations, planning fundraisers, meeting with state legislators, mastering Excel, authoring LibGuides, and working with project teams, among other responsibilities.
The interns earned 400-level History course credit in HIST 499 this semester for their paid and unpaid internship work. Students emphasized how much they enjoyed their internship experience: "I would encourage everyone to take this class!" "The work was really fun!" "I got to work toward my future career" "Don't be afraid to try something new." While the semester is over, the benefits of the internship experience will continue. Students' internship supervisors have offered to write them letters of recommendation and some of the interns will continue to work at their internship site in paid positions.
If you missed the Lightning Talks, you can watch the recording of students' presentations by clicking the link here.