The Programs in Professional Writing (PPW) works with local organizations
to offer professional writing internships to English majors every semester:
fall, spring, and summer. If you're thinking about working with PPW for
the first time, please look over our description of our program below,
and contact Jim Frost to let him
know of your interest.
We seek internships that involve a substantial writing component.
The writing can vary from journalism to technical documentation to grants
to brochures.
We seek internships that connect students with local organizations,
communities, and opportunities.
We advertise internships, primarily to English majors, and facilitate
the application process.
We monitor the work of students enrolled in academic credit for their
internships.
Our timeline
We solicit and advertise internships three times per year: once for the
fall semester, once for the spring, and once for the summer. We will advertise
internships to students at off- times if we are contacted by a sponsor,
but we have found that students are most interested in internships at
the scheduled, early-in-the-semester periods.
Our application process takes about six weeks from start to finish at
the following times of year:
Late July - early September: application period for the Fall semester
Early December - late January: application period for the Spring semester
Early May - mid June: application period for the Summer session
What we ask of sponsors
The application process takes about six weeks from start to finish. The
PPW Program will initiate and manage the process; here is what we will
ask you to do:
Week 1: Submit a job description for an internship
The PPW Program will solicit descriptions for internships
from all sponsors we have worked with before. We will post your descriptions
on our website and mail them to an English major listserve. Links
to past descriptions of internships are on this
page.
Weeks 4 -6: Interview and decide on applicants
The PPW Program will collect applications and
send them to you no later than 2 weeks into a semester. At that point,
you make all decisions about who to interview and who to hire. We ask
that you complete this process within 2 weeks, so that students interested
in earning academic credit for their internships have time to start
the process.
Week 6: Contact PPW with offers, rejections, and reasons
for rejections
The PPW Program will notify unsuccessful applicants
of their results. However, as an educational program, we wish to make
the application process as instructive as possible; one way we do this
is by communicating the rough reason for a sponsor's decision in our
"rejection" notices, so that students can learn about the
job application process in general, and their qualifications and materials
in particular. We also use this information to help solicit more-qualified
applicants and better applications.
Reasons can be general (e.g., "applicants
with more experience available," "resume sloppy") or
specific (e.g., "her response to my question about X in the interview
was lacking in ... "). We will rephrase the reasons to be tactful.
As needed: Submit reports on students' progress
About one-third of the way through the semester,
the PPW Program will solicit feedback on the progress of students who
enrolled for academic credit along with their internships. We will supply
forms you can use to supply that feedback. You are not responsible for
grading the student.
