During the last week of July, professionals from across the region discussed best practices for establishing and expanding successful internship programs during the fourth annual Lehigh Valley Internship Summit.
Now, the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC) is helping ensure regional businesses, educational institutions, and prospective interns have all the information they need through the release of newly-updated materials.
LVEDC released a revised edition of the Lehigh Valley Internship Resources guide, which includes information about internship programs, processes for how to create and evaluate a program, and a directory of the region’s colleges, universities, and career and technical schools.
The cover of the new Lehigh Valley Internship Resources guide.The 32-page guide is available to download for free on the LVEDC website.
“Connecting with the best and brightest talent is of primary importance to Lehigh Valley employers,” said Karianne Gelinas, LVEDC Vice President of Regional Partnerships and Talent Strategies. “Hosting internships with students from our region’s educational institutions can effectively build these connections between businesses and their future employees.”
The publication offers guidance and best practices in creating and expanding internships at your company. It highlights characteristics of successful internship programs, the benefits of paid vs. unpaid internships, how to market an internship program, and different types of programs such as virtual internships and micro-internships.
The guide includes questions to help determine whether a company is prepared to manage an internship program, how it can benefit from having an intern, and how an intern would benefit from working for it. It also offers resources like intern job posting examples and evaluation templates.
Also included are an orientation checklist for use by a business before, during, and after the internship program, as well as internship evaluation criteria that can be used to review the intern’s performance, which in turn contributes to the intern’s professional and personal development.
Some of the templates and checklists provided in the Internship Toolkit have been adapted or excerpted from regional educational institutions like Muhlenberg College and Moravian University, as well as from organizations like the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions, the National Society for Experimental Education, Parker Dewey, the Society for Human Resource Management, and the U.S. Department of Labor.
Sixteen pages of the guide provide a directory with information at each of the Lehigh Valley’s colleges and universities, as well as the region’s technical and vocational schools.
The directory includes websites where internship jobs are posted, and the majors and fields of study for which the schools offer internships, and contact information for specific career development professionals at each educational institution.
The schools included in the directory are Cedar Crest College, DeSales University, East Stroudsburg University, Kutztown University, Lafayette College, Lehigh Carbon Community College, Lehigh University, Moravian University, Muhlenberg College, Northampton Community College, Penn State Lehigh Valley, Bethlehem Area Vocational-Technical School, Career Institute of Technology, and Lehigh Career and Technical Institute.
In addition to providing the above materials, LVEDC has also hosted the annual Lehigh Valley Internship Summit for the past four years, providing information about recent trends and best practices regarding internship programs and offering expert presentations from regional companies and educational institutions.
This year’s summit was held on July 28 at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem Township. It included speakers and panelists from such companies and organizations as Air Products, B. Braun, Lehigh University, OraSure Technologies, PPL Electric Utilities, United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley, and Victaulic.
Visit here to read more about this year’s Lehigh Valley Internship Summit.