The Internship

Internships provide students with a real life professional learning experience and offer students a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience in a company, non-profit or public organisation that works professionally with issues relating to Business Administration and Sociology. The main objective of internships is to convert academic and theoretical knowledge into professional experience. This must be mirrored in the report. 

Hence, the report contains two elements:

• Firstly, a description of the organisation and the internship along with key learning experiences;
• Secondly, an analytical and reflective paper relating particular challenges of the host organisation and/or the work completed during the internship to relevant theories, issues or problems from the BSc Soc curriculum.

 

The formal requirements for the internship and report are available at MyCBS.

The report should be between 20 and 30 standard pages. The internship report is assessed on the 7-point scale by one internal examiner (the supervisor).
 

The internship report must be submitted to Digital Exam. The hand in dates will be announced on MyCBS. The student must also hand in documentation of completion of the internship.

 

CBS academic supervisor

The student is responsible for finding a supervisor from the BSc Soc faculty. Chosing supervisors from CBS faculty beyond the programme is possible, but requires approval from the Internship coordinator. The role of the supervisor is to ensure that the internship meets the overall requirements and is relevant for the study programme. Furthermore, the supervisor can help with framing the topic and content of the internship report. If the student wants to collect data for future projects (e.g. the bachelor project) the supervisor may also be helpful in planning this.

The student is entitled to 4 hours of supervision (including preparation time for the supervisor). The student is responsible for scheduling meetings and meeting agendas.
 

Pre-approval and Internship Contract

At CBS: The internship must be pre-approved by the Study board based on the recommendation of the internship coordinator PRIOR to the internship commencement. The application is to be submitted on the form provided on MyCBS. Along with this form, two other documents are to be submitted:

 

1. The internship contract with the organisation stating the time period and contract hours of the employment and the host organisation’s description of the extent and nature of the intern’s work and learning processes; and
2. A motivational essay (1-3 pages). This must address why the internship is relevant for a BSc in Business Administration and Sociology student and include a preliminary academic hypothesis suitable for examination through the activities the student is engaged in during the internship. The internship must be relevant for the BSc Soc qualification profile. This is judged by the nature of the host organisation and by the nature of the work.

 

The pre-approval application must contain:

• Your name, student number and contact details
• The name of the host organisation
• The host organisation’s description of the extent and nature of the intern’s work (on the form available on MyCBS)
• An explanation of the relevance for the BSc Soc programme
• An academic hypothesis, suitable for examination through the activities that the student is to be engaged in during the internship (note that the academic hypothesis can be revised later, but remember to get your academic supervisor’s approval)
• The name of the suggested academic supervisor
• The suggested supervisor’s agreement to supervise

 

Please consult information on MyCBS on how to apply. 
 

Contract with the organisation

The student also needs to sign a contract with the host organisation prior to the internship. This can be done in collaboration with the supervisor and the mentor and should contain agreements on: tasks, working hours, expectations with regards to the outcome, formal requirements and contact persons. Important issues in this regard are the definition of the work content and the workload. The tasks undertaken by an intern are often related to assisting the organisation with daily work. However, it is a good idea to combine this with a special assignment that can relate to the internship report. This could be an investigation into a specific area of the organisation. It is important to state clearly that the content of the work needs to be relevant for the BSc Soc programme and have a Sociology and Business Administration content.