AEM 4796 Internship Program: Final Report
The internship program is intended to enhance your educational experience by providing professional on-the-job training. Your work experience must be of a technical nature roughly equivalent to an entry level engineering position and your supervisor must be a degreed engineer, scientist, or mathematician. In order to register for the course, you and your supervisor must complete the Application for Credit and Work Proposal. This form must be approved by the Internship Director before you will be allowed to register for the course. In order to receive a grade for AEM 4796, you must complete a formal report (see below). Before you begin the report, your Report Title Form must be approved by the Internship Director. When you submit your Final Report you must also submit your Work Experience Survey (to be filled out by you) and the Performance Evaluation (to be filled out by your supervisor). You will not be given a grade until all forms have been completed. All forms are available online from the Internship Forms page that has both Word (.doc) and PDF versions of the forms.
Your grade for AEM 4796 will be based primarily on your final report. The format for the report is given below. Your supervisor must sign and date the title page of the report and initial each page. AEM 4796 counts for 3 upper division credits in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics. The report must be commensurate with the level of effort required for a 3 credit course.
The report should be at least 20 pages including figures and tables. Font size must be 12 and margins must be 1.25 inches. Spacing must be 1.5 lines, and pages must be numbered. At least 50% of your grade will be based on correct English usage including style appropriate for a technical report, punctuation, and spelling. You will also be graded on use of figures, tables, and other graphics where appropriate. Tables and graphs should be numbered and given titles.
The format for the report should be as follows:
- Introduction: This section should tell where and when the internship was performed, what division/section you worked for, who your supervisor(s) were, and what project(s) you worked on.
- Organizational Description: This section should tell something about the organization you worked for such as business areas/main product lines, size, annual revenue (if applicable), history, etc. You should also provide the same information about the division you worked for and tell how the division fits in the overall organizational structure.
- Program Objectives: You should describe the educational objectives that you and the organization you worked for had for your internship.
- Project(s): You should describe the project(s) that you worked on. Give an overall, top-level description of the project and then describe your particular tasks in detail. Use graphics and pictures as appropriate. Make sure you are clear on what you did and how it contributed to the success of the overall project(s).
- Lessons Learned: Describe what you got out of your internship in terms of professional development. Describe how your coursework helped you in your internship and what you wish that the AEM program at the University of Minnesota would have covered that was not part of the existing program. Specifically discuss (1) how you applied your coursework on the job, (2) what you learned about specific technologies, and (3) how the skills you learned in your BAEM program were used to enhance your organizations products, services and/or operations.
- Evaluation of the Internship Program: Provide an assessment of the program and how it can be improved.
If your report does not address each of these six areas it will be returned to you without a grade and you will be required to revise it. Once in the proper format, your report will be read, corrected and a tentative grade assigned by the Internship Director. You will be required to meet with the Internship Director to discuss your report. After that meeting, if you wish to incorporate the corrections into a second draft for a chance of improving your grade you may do so.
Make sure that you proof read your report carefully and that you use spell check on the final version that you turn in.
In many cases the work you perform may involve the use of proprietary, classified, or otherwise restricted information that you cannot include in a report which may be viewed by others outside the organization for which you worked. You should clarify what can be included with you supervisor at the start of your internship so that you will be assured that you will have sufficient material for a report. Do not wait until the end to do this as you may find you do not have enough for an acceptable report.
You are strongly encouraged to contact the Internship Director as soon as possible if you believe that a problem may arise or if you have any questions whatsoever.
Links to Writing Resources |
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See Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students (Includes guidelines for letter writing and technical writing) |
| See General Technical Writing Guidelines (Purdue University) |
| See Center for Writing: Student Writing Support (University of Minnesota) |
| See Writing Tools/Guides (Harvard University) |
Last Modified: 2012-06-26 at 11:43:32 -- this is in International Standard Date and Time Notation