GDEV 2105

Pre-Internship: Community-Engaged Learning Prep

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

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 “Pre-Departure Portfolio.” The course is intended for Global Development majors.

Last 4 Terms Offered 2025SP, 2024SP, 2023SP

Learning Outcomes

• Describe their career-related roles and responsibilities and explain how both contribute to their supervising organization’s overall mission and to “development.”
• Enumerate defining characteristics of the community/ies their supervising organization serves and hypothesize ways those characteristics might influence their development-related work.
• Articulate a personal philosophy of development, the ethical values that underpin that philosophy, and how these values might manifest or be enacted in development practice.
• Analyze and develop plans for making the most of personal strengths and mitigating health and safety risks.
• Summarize strategies for effectively engaging in intercultural communications and conflict management and explain how they would apply said practices in a given scenario.
• Formulate a set of personal and professional learning goals, a plan for achieving and monitoring progress towards those goals, and a framework articulating how the goals advance their growth and aspirations.

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