Many careers today involve collaboration with colleagues or teams from around the world, and international internships provide students with the opportunity to gain real-world work experience in an intercultural setting. While participating on a CGIS-sponsored internship students will spend a number of hours each week working in a carefully vetted professional placement, and will earn academic credit for participating in an internship seminar that contextualizes the local work culture, explore differences between it and the American workplace culture, and helps develop the skills necessary to work most effectively across cultural differences.
A large number of CGIS study abroad programs offer internships as an optional feature: students may choose to substitute an internship for one of their academic classes, and their placement will extend over the entire semester/academic year or a portion of the program. This is an outstanding opportunity to get first-hand experience of the local culture, and there is a symbiotic relationship that develops between academic coursework and the experiential learning that comes from working in a professional setting with local colleagues. Examples of this can include greatly enhanced language learning, and first-hand, concrete experience of subjects being studied in the classroom.
Summer internships are another option open to CGIS students. Since summer programs are shorter than semester- or year-long programs, summer internships tend to be more intensive and can require time commitments approaching those of a full-time job in addition to the internship seminar.
