A new report summarizes key findings from an evaluation of LeadingAge’s 10-week summer internship program.
A newly released report from the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston sheds light on the first year of the LeadingAge Summer Enrichment Program (SEP) program, a 10-week program that invites a diverse group of undergraduate or graduate students to become interns at participating LeadingAge member organizations.
SEP interns complete a substantive project at their host organizations, work with mentors to hone their skills, and take part in leadership development activities. Twenty-eight interns completed the first session of the Summer Enrichment Program in 2021. The program’s second session is scheduled to begin in June 2022.
Evaluation of the LeadingAge Summer Enrichment Program summarizes key findings from surveys of SEP interns, mentors, and preceptors, and interviews with nine interns of color. Those findings reflect the benefits that interns, mentors, and preceptors received from the program and identify several program challenges.
Key findings include:
- Intern Benefits: Interns identified many benefits they received from SEP, including the opportunity to network, gain skills, and learn about aging services and the issues facing older adults. Many interns reported that SEP offered them the opportunity to imagine themselves building careers in a sector they had not considered prior to the internship.
- Relationship Building: Interns, preceptors, and mentors all said they benefitted from the relationships they built during the program, and many indicated that those relationships would continue beyond SEP.
- Preceptors and Mentors: Most mentors and preceptors responding to the survey rated their SEP experience as excellent or good. All preceptors and mentors said they would recommend SEP to colleagues and were likely to participate in future SEP sessions.
- Interns of Color: Most interns of color felt their host organizations were well prepared to host interns of color. Well-prepared organizations typically had a diverse workforce both at executive and direct care levels and made conscious efforts to increase diversity.
- Challenges: Survey respondents called for greater clarity regarding the role of and expectations for mentors and preceptors, an internship structure at host organizations that encourages more meaningful and sufficient work for interns, and better matches between interns and mentors and between interns and host organizations.
To learn about more SEP evaluation findings, read the full report.