Internship: Generic Report Format and Grading Information

The following guidelines were developed to help you organize your thoughts while writing your internship report. Each section has been assigned a percentage value to give you a better idea of what we look for when we grade your report. If your experience did not fit this generic format, you may adapt it so that it is relevant. See the advisor for help and clarification if necessary.

This final internship report is due NO LATER THAN Monday of finals week of the first academic term after completion of the internship

I. Operations Information – 25%

1. Background sketch of organization
• location
• nature of enterprise (produce or services, market, growth potential, etc.)
• resources (available land, soil quality, water, structures, machinery, credit, etc.)
2. Organization performance
• basic organization outline (departments, chain of command, duties, responsibilities, etc.)
• key personnel (synopsis of their experience, training, attitude, effectiveness, etc.)
3. Your place in the organization

• scope of your job (specific tasks, duties, supervisory activities, etc.)
• routine (typical daily activities for department crew you worked with)

II. Analysis of Business and Cultural Practices – 50%

1. Technical aspects -This section should concentrate on analyzing various cultural and production practices used by the firm you worked for. Typical practices include such things as fertilization; watering; weed, disease, and insect control; chemical storage; propagation; planting; pruning; soil preparation, and so forth.
   
   Note: We want more than just details of how they did various tasks or procedures. The following questions address some of the points you should consider.
• Were general techniques effective? If not, what was wrong and how could it be corrected?
• Could any procedure or practice be simplified to save time and money? Were spray and fertilizer programs carefully devised or haphazard? Were operators knowledgeable? Was there an attempt to educate workers about what they were doing and why? Would it make any difference?
• Did you observe any innovative or unusual procedure that impressed or confused you?
• Was there an interest in exploring new (or old) ideas and developing methods suited to their specific needs?
2. Business and personnel management
   • Company policies
   • Labor and management relations (language and cultural barriers, general communi-cations, special problems)
   • Daily organization and job scheduling (system for informing workers of job assign-ments, recording and scheduling new jobs, preparation responsibilities.
   • Indicators of progressive management (mechanism, record-keeping, cost accounting, training procedures, off-season work arrangement, fringe benefits, profit sharing, etc.).

Note: This is often the area where businesses have the greatest problems. Your approach should be to analyze situations, point out successes and failures, and describe changes you feel could lead to improvements.

III. Attainment of Internship Objectives – 5%

1. Value of work experience
• area in which you learned new techniques or skills.
• changes in your ideas about this line of work or the industry
• changes in your level of confidence about your abilities to work and deal with people and situations.
2. Conclusions
   • is a college education of value in this field?
   • would you enjoy working for this organization on a permanent basis?
   • could you have prepared yourself better beforehand to get more out of this internship experience?
   • have your future plans been affected by your work experience?

IV. Report Quality – 20%

1. Sentence structure and grammar
2. Spelling and typing

Note: The value we have placed on your writing skills reflects our belief that you should be able to communicate effectively in writing. Our goal is to reward students who demonstrate enough pride, self discipline, and patience to produce intelligent, well-written internship reports.