Learning theory as a corrections or criminal justice major in a classroom is one thing, but supervising a real-life offender in the community is something totally different. That's why professors and department heads of the Department of Sociology and Corrections at Minnesota State University believe so strongly in the internship experience.

MSU has had an intensive internship program in place for junior and senior corrections majors for about 30 years with the goal of turning out students who understand corrections and are prepared to jump into a job.

"I don't see the internship as a shopping experience; it is knowledge, values and skills development. They need to do the career search before they commit and use it as a way to increase their skill competencies," said Joe Davis, Professor and Field Practice Coordinator for the corrections program at MSU.

All corrections majors are required to complete the 450-hour internship concurrently with a seminar class where each student gives a report at the conclusion of their field service experience with their supervisors present.

"The interns get to learn what the other interns have learned and the supervisors will elaborate and they are generous with their time and answer questions," said Davis.

Interns have the freedom and the opportunity to work in a variety of settings including prisons, halfway houses camps, probation agencies and county court services, among others. Once accepted in an internship, they must complete a journal entry each day and will prepare to write a final report.

Students must be serious about the internship experience, says Davis, if they are to truly learn about the field and be prepared to enter it upon graduation.

"I think there's plenty of room for partnership between the field and universities. There are plenty of ways to do that. The students don't have any other way to know about it. They don't come to college knowing a lot about corrections, " he said.

Preparation is Important

The entire fieldwork package at MSU is unique and designed to improve understanding of the corrections field and students' success after graduation. With this in mind, the faculty take great care to ensure corrections majors are ready for the opportunities that will come their way.

According to Davis, the importance of volunteering is impressed upon the students from the outset. The students have a chance, for example, to participate in other, less intensive volunteer programs, such as service learning, so they have a solid understanding of the various areas of the corrections field before they commit to an internship.

"We encourage them to volunteer from the very beginning to get a feel for the clientele," Davis said.

Davis also said that the corrections curriculum contains plenty of practical knowledge that they will use later on, such how to write for the field. Students in class learn to create mock PSIs (pre-sentence investigations) using a fictional client or a friend - an exercise they can also use to practice their interviewing skills.

"We are teaching the underlying skills [for the job]," said Davis.

The department heads also make an effort to engage professionals from the field to present to the students at various times during the school year - keeping the lines of communication between students and the profession open.

"We keep in close contact with the field," he said. "We've made it a point to hire people from the field who are leaders. We have two people now who are probation officers who are on leave [from their jobs to teach]. That revitalizes us and keeps us on our toes."

Having these professional connections allows the students to gain insight into the field before they actually begin to work in it.

This is what Adult Probation Agent, Denise Rients, of Blue Earth County Community Corrections experienced when she was a student at MSU. Rients landed her internship after calling one of the corrections professionals who visited MSU.

"They have guest speakers who come in and give an explanation [of their work] and they are recruiting as well. It was an eye opener for me," said Rients. "My advice is go where you want to be planted. That advice came from the faculty at MSU. Don't accept no for an answer; [the internship] can be as big as you can dream it to be."

Rients, who now supervises MSU interns in her agency in Mankato, Minnesota, said the training for corrections students in field service is critical to being able to perform on the job after graduation.

"To get a job [when I graduated] I needed to have three years of work experience. By the time I had done my two internships and my volunteer experience, for me it worked," she said.

Blue Earth County Community Corrections looks for student interns that already have the drive and commitment to the work. In a special 12-month internship offering involving MSU, college students are paired specifically with juveniles to mentor them and follow their cases through drug checks and other community supervision jobs.

The JOLT program focuses on working with juvenile offenders and provides meaningful relationships with the adult student volunteers. Other interns at Blue Earth may end up supervising more than 100 administrative cases before they are through. 

"We train them very, very well. When you are here, you have to be here, you can't just be the average," said Rients. "Our philosophy is give them the best training we can and the best real life experience. And, we have had people say this isn't what I thought it was going to be."

For interns in the Blue Earth agency, real life means 40 hours a week doing paperwork in the office and gaining experience outside of the office preparing for and going into court, or visiting offenders in the jail.

Ruth Fonstad, Probation Officer and Volunteer and Intern Coordinator for Dakota County, Minn., Community Corrections, believes that the intensive experiences that interns receive are invaluable.

"After almost four years of book learning, it's important for them to get in and apply that.  I get a lot of students who lack self confidence and until they can see that they can do the job, they aren't going to get the job," said Fonstad.

A Step Ahead

Fonstad's experience with the MSU internship program has been positive and she is certain that this type of training will help the students tremendously.

"Experience weighs real heavy. They need to get out there to show they have tried different things and can get in touch with what's going on. Until they actually try it, they don't really know," she said.

Fonstad said one area that's sets the MSU students apart from other college interns is that they are so well prepared to take on the job responsibilities when they walk in the door.

By working in an agency full-time, which is the MSU requirement, the students learn very quickly the specific responsibilities of the job and what is expected of them.

"It is giving the student a chance for employment. When I see some of these students from the beginning to the end, the self confidence they gain can make a difference in getting a job," Fonstad said.

MSU has drilled this fact into the students' heads as well and the students have responded. IN addition to being motivated to find the right internship, corrections majors also have formed a Corrections Club complete with a faculty supervisor that keeps the relationship between the students and professionals in the field active.

Next month they are planning a day-long conference with corrections professionals who will speak to the students about how best to prepare for working in the field.

All this activity makes Davis smile. He's happy to see that the program has motivated students and is turning out people who care about the different aspects of the field.

"I'm really delighted watching them grow. They can catch fire in the field - they are multi-tasking and networking, it's just amazing," he said.

Resources:

Joe Davis: email joe.davis@mnsu.edu