Faculty Internships: A Means to Bridge the Academician/Practitioner Gap

Faculty internships in business organizations are becoming a popular means to satisfy the criticism that too many business professors lack recent, relevant experience. Offers encouragement to, and reasons for,marketing educators and business people to consider seriously faculty internships as a means to bridge the gulf between marketing education and business practice. Discusses how faculty internships should be structured and implemented and the advantages, as well as problems, of internships for academic institutions, firms, professors and students. Uses the author′s recent experience as a faculty intern in a well‐known package goods company as an example and discusses lessons learned from the experience. Provides observations on differences between the college world and the corporate world.