With graduate schools experiencing a dearth of interested STEM students, it only makes sense to invest early in identifying your future graduate students. By establishing a STEM research internship program/partnership, you'll have a competitive advantage in recruiting the best students for your program. You’ll already be known to the students you want most. Your new students will already be trained for your research and loyal to your university. You'll build a reputation that will pay off with students, colleges and the community. And your university will save money while benefiting from the input of talented, enthusiastic, innovative students. With all of these advantages, you might find that you can't afford not to establish an internship program (For this document research internships and research experiences for undergraduates are the same.)

A STEM research internship is any carefully monitored research experience in which a student has intentional learning goals and reflects actively on what she or he is learning throughout the experience. By offering their time, talent and enthusiasm, Science Diversity interns will contribute to an organization’s mission and goals, while gaining valuable skills for the future, and seeing if a career is right for them. Characteristics include:

• Duration - anywhere from a month to two years
• May be part-time or full-time and paid or non-paid
• Internship may be part of an educational program developed for academic credit, or internship can be part of a learning plan developed for an individual.
• An important element that distinguishes an internship from a short-term job or volunteer work is that an intentional "learning agenda" is structured into the research experience.
• Research activities common to most internships include learning objectives, observation, reflection, evaluation and assessment.
• An effort is made to establish a reasonable balance between the intern's learning goals and the specific work in the research laboratory.
• Internships promote academic, career and/or personal development.

• Source of highly motivated pre-graduate students
• Students bring new perspectives to old problems
• Visibility of your program is increased on campus
• Quality candidates for temporary positions or projects
• Proven, cost-effective way to recruit and evaluate prospective graduate students
• Your image in the academy is enhanced as you contribute your expertise to the educational enterprise
• Federal funding agencies encourage establishing STEM research internships to broaden participation in their programs

Designing a STEM research internship program that meets your needs
As diverse as our country is in race and ethnicity, gender, persons with disabilities, so too should be their STC STEM student bodies. How do you determine the strategy that will work best for your institution? The STC STARS initiative is designing to help you determine the strategy that might best meet your needs. Research shows that there are four easy steps to implement effective internship programs. They are as follows:

• What does your program hope to achieve?
• Are you searching for additional help on a program?
• Is your organization growing quickly and having difficulty finding motivated new researchers?
• Are you resource limited, but can provide an interesting and rewarding research experiences?
• Is your program searching for prospective graduate students?
• Is broadening participation important to your program?

Carefully plan and write out your STEM research internship program goals. Mentors, interns and university researchers and college faculty are all going to be reading what you write about the internship. Draft a description that clearly explains the internship. Do you want someone for a specific part of your project? What about general support? Introduce your interns to the rewards of being a member of the research academy? Structure the internship ahead of time so that you can be sure to meet your goals and not find yourself floundering partway through.

Things to think about include:

• How much will you pay the STEM research intern?
• Where will you put the intern?Do you have adequate workspace for them? Will you help make parking arrangements, living arrangements, etc.?
• What sort of academic background and experience do you want in your interns?
  Decide on standards for quality beforehand, it'll help you narrow down the choices and find the best candidates.
• Who will have the primary responsibility for the intern? Will that person be a mentor or a supervisor?
• What will the intern do? Be as specific as possible. Interns are like others in the process of learning. They need structure so they don't become lost, confused or bored.
• Do you want to plan a program beyond the research you give your interns? Will there be special training programs, performance reviews, lunches with executives, social events? Keep in mind that your interns are walking advertisements for your university. If they have a good experience working for you, they're likely to tell their friends ý word gets around. A bad internship, by contrast, can only hurt your chances of attracting good students for next year.
• A very important part of your plan should be the assignment of a mentor or supervisory
  that is, someone from the intern's department who will be in charge of the intern. This person should be a researcher – select someone who likes to teach or train and has the resources to do it. If the person you select has never mentored an intern before, give him or her some basic training in mentoring.

How will you find those ideal candidates to fill your internship position(s)? The number-one tip from those who have established programs is to get out there early! This cannot be overemphasized to universities that want the very best interns. Begin searching three to four months before you need a student to begin. Starting early has other advantages: the longer you accept applications, the better your chance of finding the best person for the intership. The sooner you get one, the longer you have to form a good working relationship with him or her. When you're out recruiting, develop relationships with local recruitment resources. Promote yourself with internship centers at colleges and universities, attend internship and job fairs, place ads in their college newspapers and websites, and send material to student organizations. Post advertisements on university websites and get to know the contacts there.

Choose your interns just as carefully as you'd choose permanent employees. You're making an investment; time and money will go into this person. This is where the interview will come in handy: Is the intern truly motivated, or does he or she just want a job? Will the intern fit into your university’s culture? Does he or she have the level of experience you need? With careful consideration of whom to hire at the beginning, you can avoid some of the most common pitfalls of internships.

Last, but certainly not least, learn the legal implications of hiring interns. Just like any other workers, they are subject to legal protections and regulations. Protect yourself and your intern by knowing the laws: What work can and can't you assign? (See legal section later in this manual)

Once you've recruited the interns, you assign a mentor, right? The beginning days of the internship program are often its defining days. When you give them their first tasks, you're signaling what can be expected in the future. If you give them nothing or very little to do, it sends a message that this job will be easy and boring. Interns don't want that, and of course, neither do universities. The infrastructure of your internship program will probably be the single most important influence on an intern's impression of your university, and thus the chances that he or she will come back. So how do you "plan for success"? Consider the goals of your program. The nature of the program and the activities that you choose to undertake should directly relate to your program goals.

First things first: Orient! Orient! Orient! Orient! Orient your intern to his or her new workplace. This might take the form of a conventional orientation program or merely a walk around the office, depending on the size of your university. They'll be spending a great deal of time in your workplace. Give interns an overview of your program; some universities give talks or hand out information about the university’s history, vision and services. Explain who does what and what the intern's duties will be. Introduce him or her to co-workers and give them a complete tour of the facility. Making your intern at home in the office is your first step to bringing him or her back.

Give your intern the resources he or she needs to do the research. That may sound obvious, but you'd be surprised at how many universities stick their interns out in the hallway or transfer them from desk to desk. That sends a potent message you don't want to send: Interns aren't important; we don't want you here. Give the intern a desk, point out the supply room, and introduce the tech support people. If you intimidate your interns into silence, you could miss out on valuable contributions to your projects or warnings about impending problems.

Keep an eye on the intern. This doesn't mean to watch their every move, but do make sure you know what's happening with their daily tasks. Watch for signs that the intern is confused or bored. As often as silence means that an intern is busy, it also could mean that he or she is confused and shy about telling you so. It's easy to be shy in a workplace full of older strangers who all know each other. See whether the intern is trying to do anything that requires someone else's input. Make sure that work is taking precedence over web browsing. Paying attention early helps you head off problems and bad habits early on.

Along those same lines, it's important to give them lots of feedback! Especially if your interns have never done this kind of work before, they'll want to know if their work is measuring up to your expectations. No matter what the level of experience, they need you, as a more experienced worker, to let them know if their work is officially "okay". Periodically, examine what your intern has produced and make suggestions.

Evaluate the intern's progress every now and then
Remember those goals you outlined before? A few weeks after the internship begins, it's time to see how well you and your intern are meeting those goals. Evaluation processes differ. Yours might be as formal as written evaluations every three weeks or as informal as occasional lunches with the internship coordinator and/or the intern's mentor. Some universities have the intern evaluate the experience and the university as well. Again, your structure is largely up to your university’s culture and needs. As an added bonus, these evaluations will be handy later if you decide to interview a former intern for full-time work, or to publicize how successful your program has been. (see University Student Evaluation of Internship forms)

Maintaining program popularity will require hard evidence that your university is getting a return on its investment. Some universities have adopted a process of formal exit interviews. In addition to qualitative measures, a number of quantitative measures have also been adopted. Some common measures include the number of interns that become full-time graduate students; repeat requests for interns from managers; and growing numbers of intern applicants.

1. Give us real work! - It can't be said too many times that interns want to work and learn. An internship can help you get a job done that you couldn't otherwise, right?

2. Do what you say, and say what you do! - Be honest with your interns about what they can expect during their internship. If you tell the intern they will be researching a project, and they spend 90% of their time doing "grunt work," then bad feelings will develop.

3. We like feedback! - Remember that interns are students, and they may not have the research skills and experiences that you take for granted. If your intern makes an oversight, just pull him or her aside and explain how the situation should be handled in the future.

4. We want to be included too! - Is there a staff meeting that they can attend? Can they quietly tag along to that next project meeting? Headed to lunch with a couple of people in the office? Please include them in the daily life of your workplace. After all, if you provide a little more perspective on the intern's work, the product will be much better.

5. Please explain. - When you assign work, make sure you give a detailed explanation. While the work may seem trivial and obvious to you, it may not be obvious to someone who's never done it before. Patience and a few extra minutes at the beginning will pay off later when your intern can produce good work independently.

6. I want a mentor! - Make sure that interns have an effective mentor or supervisor to provide guidance. Make it someone who truly likes to teach, and the experience will be even better.

7. A minute of your time please. - The best mentor in the world is useless if he or she can't or won't spend the necessary time mentoring. As newcomers, interns may not speak up if they're feeling ignored, so the burden of making sure they're okay is on the mentor. If the busiest person in the office wants to be the designated mentor, he or she should schedule regular times to meet with the intern.

8. Be prepared! - That wonderful day has arrived and the intern goes to start their internship only to learn that no one knew they were coming, and there is no place for them to work.

9. Um... I need a chair. - It is amazing how many universities hire an intern and don't think about the fact that they will need a desk, chair, phone and a computer in order to do the task assigned. It is no fun, and not efficient to move an intern from desk to desk as people are out one day to the next. If you want to get a job done, you need to supply the intern with the tools to do the job.