We have learned a lot during our Fellowship/Internship Program. Several main considerations come to mind when thinking about running a fellowship/internship program.
Managers’ capacity and preparedness – hosting a fellow/intern may be a rewarding experience. However, working with fellows/interns is also time-consuming. It seems to be important to keep in mind that managers may need to have a dedicated portion of time to:
Prepare for their fellows/interns’ arrival, which may include drafting a work plan, thinking about goals for their supervisees, and establishing a plan B, in case something unexpected comes up (for example, data is delayed, and the analysis cannot take place)
Explain tasks/projects, help set goals, and brainstorm ideas on how to achieve these goals
Regularly meet with their fellows/interns to check in, monitor progress, as well as provide feedback and overall support/guidance throughout the program
Help fellows/interns socialize and interact with others to make them feel included, welcomed, and a part of the team/organization.
Operations team capacity and preparedness – there are many different tasks associated with each stage of the fellowship/internship program. It’s crucial to ensure that the Operations Team has enough capacity and time to hire, onboard, support, and offboard fellows/interns, especially when the program is open to candidates worldwide. For example, we work with an international employment organization that acts as a proxy employer in each of the countries our staff and fellows/interns are based. Taking into account the amount of coordination needed between international employment organization – staff internally – fellows/interns is important (the amount will vary significantly between adding 2-3 vs. 10 fellows/interns to the team).
Internal processes – capacity is one thing, but having strong, internal processes developed beforehand appears to be equally vital. This refers to hiring and candidate selection procedures, establishing reasonable timelines, setting up check-in structures with both fellows/interns and managers, as well as organizing relevant professional development and social opportunities.
Hiring internationally and remotely – it may be worth considering where most of the team members are located. If most of the staff are in the US time zones, then it may make sense to think how that could affect candidates from completely different time zones (e.g., Australia and Oceania). Will they be able to communicate with their managers easily? Will they have enough opportunities to interact with other fellows/interns and colleagues?
In summary, any fellowship and internship program may be truly beneficial to the organization running it. Most importantly, however, the questions are how to make the program beneficial to fellows/interns, and how will it impact their future education paths and careers.
Two things I’d add to the above answer (which I agree with):
RP surveyed both interns and their managers at the end of the program, which provided a bunch of useful takeaways for future internships. (Many of which are detailed or idiosyncratic and so will be useful to us but aren’t in the above reply.) I’d say other internship programs should do the same.
I’d personally also suggest surveying the interns and maybe managers at the start of the internship to get a “baseline” measure of things like interns’ clarity on their career plans and managers’ perceived management skills, then asking similar questions at the end, so that you can later see how much the internship program benefitted those things. Of course this should be tailored to the goals of a particular program.
What lessons we should pass on to other orgs / research training programs will vary based on the type of org, type of program, cause area focus, and various other details. If someone is actually running or seriously considering running a relevant program and would be interested in lessons from RP’s experience, I’d suggest they reach out! I’d be happy to chat, and I imagine other RP people might too.
Thanks so much for this question!
We have learned a lot during our Fellowship/Internship Program. Several main considerations come to mind when thinking about running a fellowship/internship program.
Managers’ capacity and preparedness – hosting a fellow/intern may be a rewarding experience. However, working with fellows/interns is also time-consuming. It seems to be important to keep in mind that managers may need to have a dedicated portion of time to:
Prepare for their fellows/interns’ arrival, which may include drafting a work plan, thinking about goals for their supervisees, and establishing a plan B, in case something unexpected comes up (for example, data is delayed, and the analysis cannot take place)
Explain tasks/projects, help set goals, and brainstorm ideas on how to achieve these goals
Regularly meet with their fellows/interns to check in, monitor progress, as well as provide feedback and overall support/guidance throughout the program
Help fellows/interns socialize and interact with others to make them feel included, welcomed, and a part of the team/organization.
Operations team capacity and preparedness – there are many different tasks associated with each stage of the fellowship/internship program. It’s crucial to ensure that the Operations Team has enough capacity and time to hire, onboard, support, and offboard fellows/interns, especially when the program is open to candidates worldwide. For example, we work with an international employment organization that acts as a proxy employer in each of the countries our staff and fellows/interns are based. Taking into account the amount of coordination needed between international employment organization – staff internally – fellows/interns is important (the amount will vary significantly between adding 2-3 vs. 10 fellows/interns to the team).
Internal processes – capacity is one thing, but having strong, internal processes developed beforehand appears to be equally vital. This refers to hiring and candidate selection procedures, establishing reasonable timelines, setting up check-in structures with both fellows/interns and managers, as well as organizing relevant professional development and social opportunities.
Hiring internationally and remotely – it may be worth considering where most of the team members are located. If most of the staff are in the US time zones, then it may make sense to think how that could affect candidates from completely different time zones (e.g., Australia and Oceania). Will they be able to communicate with their managers easily? Will they have enough opportunities to interact with other fellows/interns and colleagues?
In summary, any fellowship and internship program may be truly beneficial to the organization running it. Most importantly, however, the questions are how to make the program beneficial to fellows/interns, and how will it impact their future education paths and careers.
Two things I’d add to the above answer (which I agree with):
RP surveyed both interns and their managers at the end of the program, which provided a bunch of useful takeaways for future internships. (Many of which are detailed or idiosyncratic and so will be useful to us but aren’t in the above reply.) I’d say other internship programs should do the same.
I’d personally also suggest surveying the interns and maybe managers at the start of the internship to get a “baseline” measure of things like interns’ clarity on their career plans and managers’ perceived management skills, then asking similar questions at the end, so that you can later see how much the internship program benefitted those things. Of course this should be tailored to the goals of a particular program.
What lessons we should pass on to other orgs / research training programs will vary based on the type of org, type of program, cause area focus, and various other details. If someone is actually running or seriously considering running a relevant program and would be interested in lessons from RP’s experience, I’d suggest they reach out! I’d be happy to chat, and I imagine other RP people might too.