GDEV 2105

Pre-Internship: Community-Engaged Learning Prep

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2024-2025.

In this course, students focus on preparing for their internship experience (and future development practice more generally) through the intentional discernment about the ways in which their internship contributes to the broader development arena; who is served through the work of their internship; what they seek to learn; how they will go about fulfilling these learning goals, including through the application of personal ethical principles and critical thinking skills, and the strategies they will employ to ensure for their own health and safety. Students will demonstrate understanding and application of key course takeaways through a personal video highlighting their internship plans and approach.

When Offered Spring.

• Map the institutional development ecosystem, identify the contributions of different types of development actors to community, social, or economic development, and explain the ways their work will contribute to the work of the organization (its mission).
• Enumerate defining characteristics (e.g., demographics, geography, development opportunities and challenges, etc.) of the community/ies (broadly speaking) their development work will serve in the short and long-terms.
• Articulate a personal philosophy of development, the values that underpin that philosophy, and how these might manifest or be enacted in development practice.
• Analyze risks to the practitioner associated field-based development practice and methods to mitigate them.
• Formulate a set of personal and professional learning goals they hope to achieve through career-related work experience, a plan for achieving said goals, and a framework for how these goals build on and advance their studies and experiences to date.
• Synthesize the defining components of an upcoming career-related work experience, including what it will involve, how it contributes to the its field more generally, who will be served by their efforts, what they hope to gain from the experience, the ethical principles with which they will approach it, and the risks and risk management strategies for which they've prepared.

View Enrollment Information