MSA offers internship for MUTV, KCOU

Professors agree experience is more valuable than the compensation.

By Kaylen Ralph

Published Dec. 11, 2009

Internships for students are being offered through MUTV/Channel 22, KCOU/88.1 FM and now the Missouri Students Association.

Both the internships offered through MUTV and KCOU were approved for compensation with academic credit through the department of communication. The MSA internship allows students to pick from one of three emphasis areas. It is up to the student to contact the appropriate people within the department to see if they can receive academic credit.

MSA Senate Speaker Amanda Shelton said thus far, both strategic communications and marketing have offered favorable responses to academic credit compensation.

"The ultimate goal of the program, as with most internship programs, is to provide a unique source of out-of-the-classroom learning and professional growth," Shelton said in an e-mail. "This can be achieved with or without academic credit provided."

Brian Brooks, associate dean for undergraduate studies at the journalism school, said the MUTV and KCOU internships were not offered through the School of Journalism because they lacked professional supervision.

"I don't really ever remember anyone asking us about it," Brooks said. "We would entertain the idea as long as it was supervised not by students but by a professional."

Brooks also said students can only put three academic credit hours from internships toward graduation. He said he hopes students would use external internships to fill these hours.

"From an employer's perspective, I think employers are most concerned with students having job-related experience," said Amanda Nell, who works in student employment and online career service in the MU Career Center.

"They're more interested in what kind of experience students are getting, what they're doing on the job, rather than what type of compensation they're receiving," Nell said.

Brooks said work done on a volunteer basis rather than for academic credit is more impressive to potential employers. Randy Reeves of MUTV agreed.

"To me, work is work," Reeves said in an e-mail. "It shows you were willing to get out there and actually do the job. Practical experience is so important in our field. If I had to pick one over the other, I'd probably pick volunteer work. It looks a little more above and beyond the call of duty."

Nell said there are some advantages to receiving academic credit.

"The advantage of academic credit is that it will show up in your transcript," Nell said. "You'll have someone in the department monitoring and signing off on the work that you did."

She said academic credit was a way employers could still compensate students, even if they are fiscally unable to do so.

"Employers often want to compensate students, but might not be financially capable, so academic credit is another way of doing that," Nell said. "With many of these academic opportunities, there's additional supervision and documentation paperwork, so they want to make the experience more attractive to students and make it worth their while."

Brooks, Reeves and Nell all agreed the best type of internships are ones that give students work-related experience. Reeves said professional internships are the most impressive ones he looks for in resumes.

"In the news business, I'd go with professional internships," Reeves said. "You want to find a place where you can work in the newsroom with professional reporters and producers. You want to do more than answer the phone and get everybody coffee. That's why smaller stations are better than big markets, because they have more opportunities for you to actually do something."