Planning for an Intern

This semester I’ve got former Praxis fellow Winnie Pérez Martínez working with me in the Scholars’ Lab as an intern through UVA’s PhD Plus Program. These internships are meant to be 10-hour-a-week hands-on gigs that replace a student’s teaching obligations for a semester. At the same time, the internship introduces students to the skills and experiences that they’ll need to pursue a variety of different kinds of careers—in and out of academia. I’ve never had someone report directly to me in this way, assisting with my day-to-day work instead of directly collaborating on research. So I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what it might mean to be a responsible supervisor. I want this internship to be constructed in a way that provides Winnie with a positive and fulfilling experience at the same time that it assists with Lab tasks. Winnie and I developed a plan for the internship together to maximize the impact on her, so here are a few notes about what she’ll be doing with us from my perspective. Stay tuned for more from her on the blog in due time.

Bookend the week with check-ins

We’ve set up a structure that frames each week of the semester around a pair of opening and closing meetings. Each Monday morning, we have a 30-minute scrum in which we’ll discuss the week. During that time, we each share our responses to three questions (one minute max for the lot of them):

• What did I do?
• What’s next for me?
• What do I need from somebody else?

For the remainder of our time, we discuss our plans, upcoming meetings, and any other topics that need conversation. These meetings are brief, but they’re a way for us to practice accountability to each other. They are as much for me as for Winnie. I have a tendency to lean towards flexibility and independence with my students, so we co-created this system to make sure we don’t waste this opportunity to work together.

We end each week with a 30-minute bookend on Friday afternoon. During that time, we will debrief everything that went on the past several days. We’ll plan on a different set of questions for those meetings and have Winnie drive the conversation:

• What did I learn?
• What do I want to discuss?
• What would help me next week?

This weekly structure will offer a framework for our time together such that we consistently check in and adjust as we’re going.

The tasks

Winnie and I co-developed a series of different tasks for her to work on. When we first sat down to discuss the internship, I distinguished among a range of task categories:

• Things that are specifically useful for me and the Scholars’ Lab.
• Things that are enriching and fulfilling for Winnie.
• The broad area of overlap between the first two categories.

I told Winnie I was very uninterested in having her work on tasks that were solely of use to the Lab and not fulfilling at all for her. Instead, I wanted to prioritize the other two areas. We took to the whiteboard and drew up a range of jobs before we categorized them according to whom they helped.

We decided on a mix of different kinds of labor, some of which I’ll talk about in a later blog post. But I wanted to offer some broad buckets for the kind of work that Winnie will be doing.

Shadowing

Winnie will be sitting in on some meetings as appropriate. Most of my consultations tend to be with students interested in pursuing new research in DH or who want to learn more about the fellowships. I want Winnie to get a taste for that work, so she will be joining a conversation here and there and contributing her thoughts.

Blogging

Winnie will be writing for the site as a way to fill out her professional profile. Topics will be of her choosing, and she will decide how to shape the writing in a way that compliments the other work she does.

Curricular design

Winnie will be joining planning meetings for our fellowships to see how we go about putting together our programs from the backend. For example, I introduced her to my process for how I set things up for the new Praxis cohort every year. We started from basics, copying everything over and modifying dates. Then we discussed changes to make, why, and I went over how I communicate with staff and students about the new year. She will also run a few brainstorming sessions for us on redesigning our fellowships’ structures. Students always have unique perspectives on their experiences, and I don’t want to waste Winnie’s expertise.

Projects

And then there are the actual projects that I’m going to have Winnie work on. I have three in mind, and she’ll talk a little bit more about those in future blog posts. But here is a taste.

Project 1 - fellowship documentation

Winnie will be updating my “hit by a bus” documentation for our fellowship application committees. Two years ago, when I was on paternity leave, I put together an extensive document for Laura Miller that told her everything she needed to know to run one of our fellowship application committees in my absence. I shared everything from “the CFP goes out on this date to these people” to “if you get questions of this nature you should write to these contacts in the Graduate School.” I also shared a lot of template emails and gave suggestions for how to run meetings. Winnie is going to update this documentation and make parallel materials for our other fellowship committee. These documents are useful for others who might run a committee in my absence, but they’re also helpful for me. No matter how many times I’ve done this work, I always forget the sequence of communication for certain elements of the process.

Project 2 - alumni data

Our current set of data on alumni outcomes was started by Rennie Mapp and her RA years back. That spreadsheet collects information about all the different students that have come through our programs and where they wound up. We did some good work updating those materials, but that data hasn’t been touched in several years. Winnie is going to do a pass over the data to update it with our most recent students.

Project 3 - update development packet

In conjunction with her work on our alumni data, Winnie is going to be updating the packet that we give to our development office as they pursue long term stable funding for our fellowships. We have had several versions of this packet over the years, some directed for specific audiences. These materials typically describe our programs, discuss demographics and alumni data, offer sample projects and project links, and more. The packet is about five years out of date. I want Winnie to read through it, highlight everything that needs attention, and then work with me to update things.

So that’s where we’re going to start. You’ll be hearing more from us over the coming semester as we work together. My hope is that this post outlines a partnership in the spirit of the Collaborators Bill of Rights, the Student Collaborators Bill of Rights, the Postdoctoral Laborers Bill of Rights, and more. I want to make sure that we’re designing a program, first and foremost, based around the values that we want to bring to the collaboration. This internship should be useful for her—not just for the Lab. Ultimately the Scholars’ Lab will benefit as well, but we will lead with experiences that serve both of us.