We ask that the companies provide a work environment that allows for substantial new learning and professional growth – i.e. this is typically not an environment where interns are doing highly repetitive tasks but instead one that requires independent thinking and learning new skills. We have not encountered any situations in the electrochemistry hi-tech industry where this is not met.
We also ask that the supervisors meet with us at least once through the course of the internship (typically via video conference, for ~30 min) so we can get feedback on the students’ performance and strengths and weaknesses. We use this to provide better mentoring for that student and to improve our program. We also visit in person at times when convenient with our travel schedule and allowed by the industry partner.
As part of the program students are also required to submit three internship reports (one each internship quarter). These reports cannot include confidential information and the documents must be approved by the industry mentor/supervisor prior to submission. The student is also not allowed to disclose any confidential information to us in their presentations. All intellectual property the students work on or develops stays completely with the industry partner and the university is uninvolved.
The salary is negotiated directly between student and industry partner. Sometimes some of the compensation is dedicated by the company for the student to pay for internship credits over the 9 month internship portion of the program. For the 2021 cohort, the average annualized internship compensation was $75,000, although the amounts varied substantially from the mean based on location, size and resources of company, and other factors.