How to Develop an Effective Internship Program

Studying emergency management or a related subject can pave the way for a career in the field, but having experience to go along with the courses is critical. That’s why students want internships. But a well developed internship program can also benefit an emergency management department and the profession as a whole.

“Emergency management as a field in higher education is fairly new,” said Jessica Geib, academic intern coordinator at the Florida Division of Emergency Management. “We’re seeing the need to train students and give them some real-world experience before they graduate.”

The goal of the Florida program is to give students that real-world work experience, as well as access to leaders in the field and networking opportunities.

“Within the first few weeks, they’re required with their supervisor to come up with four or five goals for the internship,” Geib said. “We do ask that there be some sort of product at the end, so when they go to interview they can say, ‘I’ve worked on this plan or created this report or presented to this group of people.’”

Internship programs may start out informally, but if a program is to grow and be successful, the department will need to consider a variety of topics, from how to select interns to what they should do during an activation.

Nuts and Bolts

It used to be that students who wanted an internship in Northern California’s Sonoma County would simply ask for one and the department would arrange it. But in the 15 years that Christopher Helgren has been with Sonoma County Fire and Emergency Services, he has seen the program become more formal.

Today, interns are part of the overall county volunteer program. Sonoma County usually has one or two interns at a time in a mix of paid and unpaid roles. That way, job descriptions and background checks — “all those things that are part of a sustainable program” — are formalized, said Helgren, the department’s emergency manager. Several interns have gone on to careers in emergency management, he added.

Tips for Success Based on their experience working with interns, emergency managers from throughout the U.S. shared their tips for building a program that will be successful over the long term. Establish relationships with local universities. The Florida Division of Emergency Management has a great relationship with nearby schools, said Jessica Geib, the agency’s academic intern coordinator. “They know the students that we’re looking for. That’s been really beneficial.” The importance of that relationship was echoed by others. “Build a rapport not just with the interns but with the department coordinators and managers for each program,” said Gabriela Noriega, coordinator of Los Angeles’ internship program. They will refer students to you. Set expectations. Let interns know that they’ll be included in some high-level meetings and need to conduct themselves professionally. Geib also makes sure the supervisors know what the interns are going to do. “Laying all of that out at the beginning has done well for us.” Be realistic. Remember that even volunteer interns aren’t really free. “You have to invest your staff’s time in educating and supervising them,” said Christopher Helgren of Sonoma County, Calif., Fire and Emergency Services. “You’re not going to just sit them at a desk and say, ‘OK, why don’t you write a plan for me.’” Provide structure to guide the intern and program as a whole forward. “It isn’t just free labor or having someone extra come in,” said Micki Trost of the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. “You need to spend your current staff time developing a program and have real work for them to do. They need to be supervised.”

The evolution of the program illustrates a number of questions a department will need to answer when developing an internship program:

Will the interns be paid?

Florida’s interns are unpaid. “Most of them need an internship for a specific class or for their major,” Geib said.

At the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, most interns are unpaid, though some are paid as contract employees, said Micki Trost, the department’s strategic communications director.

At the city of Los Angeles Emergency Management Department, the program started as an unpaid internship but is now paid.

What background do students need?

Look beyond emergency management students. Geib said her department has interns who are majoring in public affairs, geography and even accounting. “In the work of emergency management, there’s a place for every background,” she said.

“We’re looking for students who may not necessarily have a background in emergency management but have a desire to learn,” Geib added. Interns are not necessarily emergency management majors — not all schools even offer that as a possibility. “We want students who are able to work independently and are interested in networking and exposing themselves to what we do.”

Colorado offers internships to students enrolled in master’s degree programs. The fields vary but include homeland security, communications, cybersecurity and emergency management, said Trost.

The Los Angeles internship program is primarily for graduate students, usually those in master’s degree programs and often in fields like public policy, urban and regional planning, or public health, said Gabriela Noriega, the program’s coordinator.

What is the screening process?

Geib works closely with the human resources department to be sure interns go through a screening process similar to that used for regular employees.

In Colorado, interns must pass background checks just like other employees, Trost said, a process that can take eight to 12 weeks.

And in some cases you have to verify their experience. “Sometimes they oversell themselves; they don’t have the skill sets that they say they have,” Helgren said.

Finally, build on what you have. “If the county or city already has a volunteer or intern program in place, take advantage of the products and practices they already use,” Helgren said.

How long will the internships last?

In Colorado, students spend at least eight months as interns, working four to eight hours per week. And in the Los Angeles program, students can extend their internships longer than a semester based on funding and performance.

The Right Tasks

Offering substantial projects makes Los Angeles’ program attractive, Noriega said, and the program gets top students from local universities.

Noriega should know: She was in the department’s second cohort of interns after the program started in 2009. As she finished her internship, the program coordinator moved to a new job and Noriega was hired. She was finishing her Ph.D. in environmental analysis and design, and her dissertation was on earthquake risk assessment.

“What drew me to the intern program was the level and complexity of the projects,” Noriega said. “I was involved in the city’s local hazard mitigation plan.”

She also worked on other projects and was able to participate and observe during activations. “I never made coffee or filed anything. I managed my schedule and completed my projects. Our biggest selling point is we’re project-driven — this is not task-oriented.”

This is a common approach for internship programs, though the complexity of the projects may vary depending on whether the participants are undergraduate or graduate students.

“You don’t want to have someone get frustrated, especially if you’re not paying them,” Helgren said. “Volunteers won’t come back if they don’t feel that what they’re doing is useful.”

In Florida, Geib “identifies the needs, wants and desires of students and those of the organizations looking for students to make sure it’s a good experience for each,” said Aaron Gallaher, communications director for the state’s Division of Emergency Management. “We want to make sure the students are getting real experience, not being used as cheap labor.”

Colorado takes a similar approach: “When they are assigned into the division, they are given ownership of a project,” Trost said.

And in Sonoma County, interns work on a variety of projects. For example, the department has a database with contact information from different government agencies that needs to be updated annually. “Often we’ll have our intern go through and either validate the numbers or get the new information,” said Helgren. “It gets them talking to people from other agencies, and it gives us an updated contact list.”

The department also has used interns to validate processes in the Emergency Operations Center. “We’ll have them read a checklist and see if they can follow it,” Helgren said. “Then we incorporate their input.”

Additional activities for internship programs include:

• Provide mentoring. Geib said her department makes sure interns have a chance to learn about how other agencies operate and to network with other professionals. They also ensure participants have a tangible product to show at the end of the internship.
• Provide education beyond the day-to-day work. For example, bring in lunchtime speakers for interns on subjects like getting involved in the community and professional etiquette.
• Include the interns in activations. Florida has a lot of exercises, said Geib, and interns are included in them. In the event of a real-world activation, interns would be included as well.
• Consider interns’ skills. “A lot of times interns will bring their own skill sets,” Helgren said. “We’ve had some of them help us with graphics, social media or technology.”

Looking to the Future

In the past two years, more than 150 students from 33 different colleges or universities have applied for internships and 50 have been accepted and placed in the Florida Division of Emergency Management. Students were assigned to 12 different projects and departments. Six interns have been hired into regular jobs in the past year. Geib also helps place students in more than a dozen different county and private-sector internships.

The vast majority of these interns work in the department’s offices. But recently, a group of students did a remote internship. They wanted to study private-sector preparedness for disasters by giving a questionnaire to businesses affected by Hurricane Sandy. The department accepted the proposal for a remote internship, so the students did the research and came to Florida to present it.

“We used it to create marketing materials to present to businesses in our area,” Geib said. “It’s fairly new; that was our first success story.”

But virtual internships may become more common in the future. “There are emergency management students all over the country who are looking for opportunities, and we provide them with a very unique experience here in Florida,” said Geib. Virtual internships are one way these students can take advantage of this experience. “They may not be able to relocate here.”

Technology has made the idea of a virtual internship easier, and in an office in a state as large as Florida, workers are used to interacting with people who aren’t in the same building. “It used to be letters, phone calls, maybe a fax machine,” Gallaher said. “Now we’ve got Skype and real-time interaction.”

Whether the participants work remotely or in the office, an internship program provides valuable experience for the students and potential future employees for the department.

“In emergency management, you need to have hands-on experience to get your foot in the door,” said Noriega.