Should you encourage your PGRs to do an Internship?

By Dr Joanna Royle, Researcher Development Manager, and Adam Gordon, Meagan Jannett and Tsion Habte, PGR Interns on the ‘Twin for Hope’ Summer Academy for Research Communications.

Internships are increasingly both encouraged and available as part of doctoral professional and career development. Sometimes Researcher Development has a (misplaced!) reputation for being about stacking up training courses.  While courses are a really valuable component of the doctoral journey, they don’t offer the kind of hands-on skills development and career transition that is fostered through actually doing the things that are taught in courses. There is good evidence that undertaking an internship hones researchers’ problem solving skills, socio-emotional competencies, teamwork, and perhaps most importantly, their consciousness of workplace culture  (Silva et al 2015). Internships give access to otherwise opaque networks and informal mentoring, as well as CV-able evidence of a researcher’s ability to meet future job requirements. Indeed, so valuable is this opportunity to foster graduate attributes and gain access to the hidden curriculum (Elliot et al, 2020) of post-PhD life, that the ESRC-funded Scottish Graduate School for Social Sciences mandates them for many of their scholarships.

How do internships differ from Research Assistant (RA) opportunities, and are they more or less useful?

Within the University sometimes this is a matter of semantics: the title ‘Intern’ is perhaps more likely to be used for roles in professional services, and RA for those on academic projects. In practice, however, both could include investigation, critical thinking, cross-unit communication, project delivery, event management, public engagement, report writing, and a host of other skills that will stand the researcher in good stead for a wide range of future career destinations.  The practicalities of working across units and budget codes, procurement processes and collaboration agreements, are valuable insider knowledge no matter what a scholar goes on to do after their doctorate.

Before we go any further it is important to stress that we absolutely do not endorse unpaid internships. Work is work and must be appropriately valued and renumerated. For example, the Research Culture and Researcher Development team has a number of annual internships, which gives time to build relationships and develop skills. These 12-hour contracts come with real responsibilities (such as delivering the 3 Minute Thesis competition), but also the support to grow professionally and to steer their own learning and development (see for example these reflections on learning from our much applauded interns including Charlie, Emily, Adam, Rachel, Karen, Misha, Gabriela, and Paola).

As we get into the swing of a new year, this could be a great moment for Supervisors to initiate or return to conversations with their PGRs about opportunities advertised through the University of Glasgow Internship Hub. It is also worth noting that such internships do not have to be a long-term commitment. Below are testimonies from three PGRs who interned on the 2023 Summer Academy for Research Communication, a bespoke two-week online development programme between the University of Glasgow (UofG) and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA). In just 10 weeks Adam, Meagan and Tsion not only got experience of managing a short-term intensive educational project, but also ‘back-stage’ insight into the logistics and diplomatic negotiations of how Universities operate. Their stories, below, show the rich range of benefits – both personal and professional – that an internship can bring.

Tsion:

My internship experience was unexpectedly rewarding, as it granted me the opportunity to take on, make crucial decisions, and contribute ideas to enhancing the Summer Academy’s overall quality. The planning to delivery of summer academy within 10 weeks, was both intensive and challenging which required flexibility even at the last minute. In addition, it involved addressing technical glitches ensuring smooth Zoom sessions, and accommodating participants who faced connectivity issues due to the ongoing events in Ukraine.

My involvement in this initiative, as a first-year Ph.D. student at the University of Glasgow, was remarkably enriching. Primarily aimed at mid-career researchers and those in the latter stages of their Ph.D. studies, I didn’t anticipate benefiting as much from the course content itself; but I found it immensely beneficial even at this early stage of my doctoral journey.

Adam:

Working on the Summer Academy was a unique challenge, as it was the first entirely online event I have helped to organise. Though I have run many individual online sessions, delivering a full-scale, carefully crafted programme of online events is another thing entirely!  Running online sessions is always an exercise in staying calm. Good planning shows at these times, because you already know what you need to do when things go wrong.

My main responsibility was to design expert panel sessions. Although a logistical nightmare, it turned into an enjoyable task, as the researchers I contacted were invariably friendly and extremely willing to help. They contacted others on my behalf, suggested colleagues’ names, and gave fresh ideas for the session. There is a wellspring of genuine goodwill in the university that I don’t think we discover until we are obliged to reach out across the boundaries of our own fields.

Coming back to academia from arts practice, I am often surprised by how radical certain things are perceived to be within the university. To me, this underscores the power of interdisciplinary conversations and contacts, and highlights the value in what researchers with atypical careers paths have to offer. I learned much from my colleagues in other disciplines, including the sciences; primarily, that our working methods are not so dissimilar as you might expect.

 Meagan:

When I applied for the Researcher Development intern position, I was only looking for a job to float me through the summer. I have prior experience in event planning and management, so the position seemed like a good fit. I was expecting the usual for events — a lot of stress on the front end, hurry-up-and-wait, all the sorts of situations I’d been working in for years prior to starting my DFA at Glasgow. What I wasn’t expecting, could not have planned for, was how meaningful of an experience this internship would be.  

One reason I applied to this internship, rather than falling back on my bartending experience for a summer, was that I wanted to learn what it meant to put together an event through an academic institution. Weddings and parties are lovely, but there’s no Teams or Zoom or guest speakers, there’s no brochures to be made or reports to be written. Through this internship, I learned how to use Canva to make a variety of marketing materials; I boosted skills in Teams and Excel; and I practised writing in a style much clearer and more precise than my own creative and (usually more) colloquial communication; I gained confidence in cold-contacting strangers, whether that be to discuss a certificate design, or to welcome a speaker. I was treated like a professional and given the chance to rise to that level. As I move into my final year of my PhD, I feel more confident in my ability both to communicate my research, and work with others on team projects. 

It’s a humbling experience, when half of the participants in your program are living in a conflict zone. Zoom calls were dropped, picked back up, dropped again; participant names flickering in and out, here and then gone. I began to keep a closer eye on the news. I’ve never been skilled at pre-class chat or small talk, but I found myself pushing into those spaces, trying on a new skin. I wanted to learn names and faces; I made a point of asking everyone how their day was and encouraging the happy chatter of newly-made friends.  For those two weeks, we were our own little community reaching out across the miles to encourage and support one another, to learn and laugh together.