Internship

Requirements for starting your internship

To start your internship, you must have completed the following parts of your course programme:

• 45EC of your courses
• All the compulsory courses of your specialisation, including the non-technical courses:
  • 201900007 Perspectives on Engineering Design
  • 201100137 Philosophy of Engineering: Ethics

You must satisfy these requirements at the moment you actually want to start the internship. It is possible to start the preparation of your internship (well) before you satisfy the requirements. We advise you to start preparations about six months before you plan to start your internship.

Exam results still pending

You may start the internship at a moment that results of examinations are still pending. However, in case these results appear to be insufficient later, the examination board may order you to interrupt your internship to repair these insufficient results.

Course programme must be fixed and submitted

You must have submitted your course programme to the Education Office, approved by your programme mentor before starting the internship. Please check if your course programme indeed reflects the courses you actually attended. If not, then please submit a new course programme to your programme mentor for approval and submit it afterwards to the education office. See "Setting up and organising your programme".

Late start of your preparations

Even when you are late, starting your preparations for the internship, the internship office will assist you to find an appropriate position. However your chances to find one will be less than when you had started in time.

Study/work load

The study load of an internship is 20 EC, which coincides with 14 weeks of full time work. Indeed, according to the rules an internship should not last more than 14 weeks (full time) and not less. When a student and a company want to have a longer working relationship, then the total period can be divided into two parts. First, the internship of 14 weeks is carried out and completed with an assessment. After this, the company and the student may keep a further working relation outside the scope of the internship.

Purpose of the internship

The purpose of the traineeship (internship) is to get working experience in a company or institute at an academic level: working in an organisation outside the University of Twente which has specific purposes: carrying out research or delivering products or services to clients.

 After the internship the student should be able to contribute to the research and/or development in a company or organisation:

• To apply academic knowledge and skills in a professional setting.
  • To attune yourself and your work to the situation in the organisation and the wishes of your supervisor within the context of an existing task description.
  • Defining own design/research goals in this situation, judge which parts of the problem need further analysis.
  • Planning the work to be carried out according to the available time.
  • Analysing the economic aspects of the work and the impact of it on society.
• To apply and expand scientific and technical competencies in a professional setting.
  • Expanding and applying your knowledge about the topic(s) of the internship
  • Carrying out analyses on an abstract level, proposing experiments and designs and/or constructive activities and carrying them out in a methodologically correct way.
• Interact and communicate in a professional organization and practice business etiquette.
  • Taking part in discussions about the work with colleagues in the organisation.
  • Finding assistance from colleagues in the organisation for specific details of the work.
  • Reporting about the work in oral and written form.

Contents

During the internship (traineeship, external training) you apply the knowledge, you acquired during your course programme, working at a company or institute. The purpose is to work under circumstances resembling as much as possible the situation after your graduation in our first job. This means that during the internship you will be considered in the organisation as a junior colleague by the other employees. You will have to carry out a certain task that has been written down in a task description before you started your internship. The internship has a study load of 20 EC and will take at least 14 weeks of work. From the start of your internship the following topics are on the agenda:

Discussions with your supervisor

Discuss your task description with your supervisor. Probably this description has been kept very global without too many details. You have to negotiate with your supervisor what you can contribute within the available time of your internship. After your first meeting you should have regular meetings with your supervisor to discuss your progress and to find out if you are still on the right track to reach the aims that you have.

Literature search and orientation

Your course programme should give you a sound basis to carry out your task in the organisation. However, almost certainly there will specific topics that you don’t know about and that you will have to study before you can start your work. It may be necessary to read literature and to consult more experienced colleagues about details and techniques.

Planning

To be sure that you will be able to reach your goals you should plan ahead. Check your planning during your work. Adapt it if unexpected things happen. This way you can keep track of your progress, which you can use during you discussions with your supervisor.

Carrying out your work

Now it is time to show that you can use the knowledge and competences you brought with you from the university. So you should identify the problems to be solved, analyse them, formulate solutions, implement these solutions and evaluate them.

Economy and Society

Of course your task has been defined by the company, but it may be expected from you that you think about the role your activities play in the organisation: why did they give you this task? How do they fit the activities of the company? Also, the activities of the organisation will have a certain impact on the society to which it delivers its products or services. You contribute to these products or services so your work has its impact on society that you might contemplate. It is expected from you that you spend some attention about this in your internship report.

Report

The first purpose of your report is to inform the company about your work. Also the report should contain documentation about your products that can be used by your successors. However the report should also inform your UT supervisor and other people from the UT about your work. They will be less well informed about the company and your work, so your report should give enough background information to make your work understood by them. Discuss with both your supervisors their expectations about the report. A general setup is given at the tab “Writing the report”, left menu.

Assessment

At the end of your internship, your supervisor at the organisation will assess you by filling in the External Supervisor Evaluation form (see left menu). Your UT-supervisor will act as the examiner and give you your final mark by filling in the UT-supervisor assessment form (left menu).

Organisation

The following persons and organizations play a role during your internship:

• The host organization, which is the company or institution where you will carry out the internship. The host organization assigns a staff member who will supervise your work.
• The Educational Supervisor is a lecturer of your master’s programme. He/she will monitor the scientific level of your internship. The Educational Supervisor should give approval to the internship before you make your final appointments with the host organization. After the Internship, he/she will carry out the final assessment and decide about the mark.
• The internship office will assist the student from the beginning of the searching process finding a position until the end of the Internship, when the last documents should be archived.

Options for an internship

Many students find an internship position at a company, but also an institution or university is possible. An internship can be done everywhere in the world; in Enschede but also in New Zealand or somewhere in between. “The sky is the limit”, unless you manage to find a position with NASA or ESA as an astronaut. The only place on earth definitely out of scope is the UT itself. In all cases, the host institute should provide an assignment that must be approved by the educational supervisor. Approval will only be given if the assignment has sufficient academic level.

How to find a position

One might distinguish three ways to find a host institute:

1. The database of the internship office: the office maintains databases containing companies and experience reports. These reports are written by students and describe their experiences during the internship.
2. A lecturer in a chair (research group): during research, lecturers often cooperate with companies and institutions that might also be willing to provide an internship position.
3. On your own: it is possible and allowed to find an internship position on your own. Many companies offer internship positions on their websites. Finding a position in this way may not be easy but it may lead to a surprising and rewarding internship.

In all cases the internship must be approved by the educational supervisor before you make your final appointments with the host institute.

Information sessions

Twice a year, information sessions are held about the internship, in September and April. You can find them in the timetables of the master’s programmes and they will be announce clearly to all students.

First contact and registration

Make an appointment with the internship mediator (mobility-eemcs@utwente.nl) if you start to think about an internship. During this meeting, the procedure will be discussed and a planning will be made for the preparation, the internship itself and the completion after return. See your mediator at least six months before you plan to go. After this meeting, the Canvas site with training positions will be opened for you.

Mobility Online

Please also register the start of preparation in the Mobility Online system (see left menu).