Chapter 18: Flexibility Tomaximize International Internship Potential

The International Internship Program (IIP, 2021) at UW-Madison was founded in 2010 through a proposal to the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates to address increased demand for internships abroad observed by both study abroad and career services units. International internships were found to fall between these two units requiring an office to consider both the career development and employer relations perspective, as well as issues inherent in international student mobility such as intercultural communication, visas, and health and safety. IIP was thus conceptualized to bridge these worlds and to fulfill a mission to identify, cultivate, and promote international internships to foster global competence development. IIP employs a flexible model to engage a wide range of students and organizations worldwide with mutually beneficial internship experiences. This flexibility includes duration, location, credit, compensation, and internship sourcing to allow students and organizations to get university support for a variety of internships around the world. This approach has allowed internship partnerships through alumni and state connections, as well as opportunities sourced by students themselves, with faculty support, and more. IIP’s academic framework brings students from many disciplines interning around the world together in an asynchronous online course to explore culture in their different workplaces. In the program’s first 10 years IIP worked with nearly 1,000 students interning in over 70 different countries, representing academic disciplines across the UW-Madison campus. This chapter explores the opportunities and challenges that this flexibility brings.