Internship Program Requirements

The internship program for Communication Design and Experience Design at Miami University is designed to give learners the experience of working in design practice daily. The learning that comes from this is invaluable for their insights into the industry and offers employers an opportunity to be an integral part of early-career designer development.

Students in this program earn credit for their internship work and it is expected that their work is beneficial to employers. For these reasons, we require that students and employers accept the following responsibilities to ensure credit is earned, and that students are productive designers during their internships.

Student Responsibilities

Design learning involves growing one’s design thinking, knowledge, and skills. Students who wish to complete an internship for credit must agree to the following requirements. If students hope to learn from the internship experience, they should apply themselves fully to the work appointed them by their employers.

Students involved in the internship program must agree to the following:

  1. Students should be a second-semester sophomore, a junior, or a senior.
  2. Students are responsible for selecting and coordinating where they will intern.
  3. Students are responsible for registering for the internship.
    For each hour of credit, the student must spend a total of 60 hours at the internship site.
  4. Students agree to pursue the internship for no more than 3 credit hours (per internship).
  5. Students must provide the Faculty Internships Coordinator with information about how they can be contacted during the internship.
  6. Upon completion of the internship, students must summarize their duties and the work performed in a presented report. A digital sample of work should be included for review. Credit will not be granted until this report is presented and body of work submitted.
  7. It is the student’s responsibility to make sure the final evaluation by the employer has been completed.

Internship opportunities will be posted on the Design Miami Ohio Intranet website when they are shared with design faculty. These are provided as a service, but students may elect to intern anywhere they choose as long as it satisfies internship requirements.

Employer Responsibilities

Practicing designers are important educators in the design learning process. The internship experience facilitates learning by doing. In order for learners to advance their thinking, knowledge, and skills, employers must be actively engaged in the learning process.

Employers involved in the internship program must agree to the following:

  1. The student must be supervised by a designer involved in visual design (this includes branding, graphic, interaction, environmental, service or product design, as long as the production of visual design is a significant component of this work).
  2. The internship should total at least 180 hours of on-site work. For example, at least twenty hours per week for two continuous months (nine weeks) would equal 3 credit hours.
  3. The work should take place on site, not in a freelance capacity.
  4. Although we realize that in many instances the student may do production work, it is important that some design work is produced by the student.
  5. In most situations, compensation for the student’s work is appropriate and warranted.
  6. The employer must be willing to state in writing at the beginning of the internship, the student’s responsibilities, and schedule, and evaluate the student’s performance twice during the experience.

Employers can submit job opportunities and internships at the designmiamioh.org website.