Internship program

Goal

Make sure no one graduates without real workplace experience: real client work, professional references, and at least one strong portfolio piece.

A required internship built into the degree, so students complete a supervised placement with a host employer, 240 hours in a real business or studio, before they graduate. It was designed into the program from the ground up, not inherited as an existing course.

Audience

Students nearing the end of the program, and the employers who host them. Every kind of digital artist we graduate: animators, graphic designers, UX designers, photographers, filmmakers, video editors, motion designers, and social media marketers. The placement has to fit the discipline, so a photographer does not get parked in a marketing office and a UX student does not spend 240 hours retouching product shots. Matching the student to work they will actually do after graduation is most of the job.

Process

The program works closely with the campus Career Services team to line up placements and match each student to the right host employer, local businesses, campus partners, and the Design Studio, where a paid student can carry an internship at the same time. It then supports them throughout the internship: regular check-ins, coaching on the work and on navigating a workplace, and help turning the experience into references and a portfolio piece. Because the internship is built into the degree, it is a guaranteed part of finishing, not an optional add-on.

Technology

• A Canvas course shell that carries the internship as a graded, required part of the degree rather than an optional add-on.
• Placement agreements and a host-employer evaluation instrument behind each 240-hour supervised placement.
• Direct coordination with campus Career Services to source placements and match each student to a host that fits their discipline.
• Host employers drawn from the program’s industry advisory partners, including the campus Design Studio, where a paid student can carry a placement at the same time.

Outcomes

Every graduate leaves with 240 hours of supervised placement, professional references, and at least one portfolio piece, because the internship is built into the degree rather than offered as an option. Work made by students in the program has won Artists of Promise awards in the Maricopa district competition, two of them shown below.

The internship course also draws the program’s strongest formal evaluation: in the most recent official department review, students rated every item on the instrument at 5.0 out of 5, with an overall 10 out of 10 (a small cohort of three respondents). Those marks belong to the placements themselves. The host employers, drawn from the program’s industry-advisory partners, provide the real client work and mentorship students respond to. The faculty role is advising, matching each student to a placement that fits their discipline, and managing the agreements and evaluation behind it, not delivering the internship experience.

The student work below came out of the program, two pieces that each won an Artists of Promise award in the Maricopa district competition.

Status

Live and running now as a required, built-in part of the degree. Every graduate completes a 240-hour supervised placement matched to their discipline. The faculty role is matching, support through the placement, and managing the agreements and evaluation behind it, not delivering the internship experience itself.