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New Program Offers Career Previews With significant fanfare, Smith is launching its new internship program, "Praxis: The Liberal Arts at Work," this fall. The program is believed to be unique among Smith's peer institutions, and the college is assuring it a high-profile start-up by giving it newly renovated quarters and a two-day inaugural event in October.
A summer-long construction project turned the first
floor of the CDO into the Liberal Arts Internship Center. Barbara Reinhold,
director of the CDO, left foreground, consults with a student in the new
explorations library. The program is considered a signficant innovation because it will offer each student access to a stipend that ensures she can afford to participate in an internship that will draw on her academic background and build on her career goals. The name Praxis reflects these objectives, meaning as it does "action learning; practical learning; practice as distinguished from theory." Although students may hold as many unpaid internships or internships funded by outside organizations as they want, they will have access to only one Praxis-funded experience. Student internships are not new to institutions of higher education or liberal arts colleges; indeed, in the last several years more than half of Smith students have held internships in hundreds of settings. However, the college's research suggests that Smith is the first institution of its kind to guarantee every student access to a funded internship. Praxis is one of the initiatives that developed out of the self-study Smith undertook in preparation for its 1997 decennial reaccreditation. It is tied to Smith's mission of producing women who will make a difference in society, be committed to public service and lead the institutions and organizations that improve communities. "We are persuaded," wrote the members of the self-study committee, "that the educational experiences of Smith students are greatly enhanced when theoretical learning is tied to practical experience.... Such experiences can allow students to explore academic disciplines in depth, providing the impetus for higher graduate-school and career aspirations. These internship experiences can be thought of as apprenticeships-to a faculty member, administrator or organization, whether on or off the campus-that make a significant contribution to the student's education." While internships in the corporate world and the professions will be included under the Praxis umbrella, the program's focus will be on areas where funded internships are typically not available. These will include the nonprofit sector, the arts, start-up businesses, some media and also collaborations with faculty. The planning of the program and the nuts-and-bolts work required to get it under way amount to "a tremendous undertaking," says Barbara Reinhold, director of the Career Development Office (CDO), which will administer Praxis. She and her staff have already endured a summer-long construction project that transformed the first floor of the CDO into the Liberal Arts Internship Center. Now the bright, attractively furnished space houses an "explorations library" (for researching fields of work, sample jobs, workplace trends, and alumnae connections) and a bank of computers. "Virtually all of our internships and jobs are on our Web site [www.smith.edu/cdo]," says Jane Sommer, associate director of career development. She adds that CDO's Ultimate Access database, updated daily, allows undergraduates and alumnae to tap information on-line and sort possibilities by field and location. The new setting should make the center's extraordinary resources far more accessible to students. Material about internships had been housed on the CDO's second floor in cramped quarters that were "a nightmare during internship season," says Sommer. Now the program has room to grow as it expands to fulfill the college's promise that every Smith student will be offered a funded internship in a field appropriate to her academic and career goals. The college will launch the program with a series of public events on October 2 and 3 that will explore the role of women, liberal arts and early practical learning in the 21st-century workplace. A keynote speech by Rochelle Braff Lazarus '68, chair of the Smith College Board of Trustees and chief executive officer of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, will be followed by a symposium featuring Angela Diaz, M.D., director of the Adolescent Health Center at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York; Elizabeth Mugar Eveillard '69, managing director of Paine Webber Group, Inc.; Nancy Lowe Henry '67, senior vice president and chief legal counsel, Dun & Bradstreet; Harry P. Kamen, retired chairman and chief executive officer of MetLife and a Smith trustee; and Kathryn J. Rodger, '70, executive director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. A number of alumnae who have been or expect to be involved with Smith's internship efforts will also be on campus to talk with students about opportunities in their fields during networking and mentoring sessions. |
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