The University of Texas' Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium (IE) offers a distinctive vision of education attractive to minorities as well as a unique methodology for expanding the minority graduate applicant pool and improving undergraduate education for all students. The IE Pre-Grad Internship is offered for academic credit, and student participants work closely with graduate student mentors and faculty supervisors to create internship experiences aimed at exploring, anthropologically and from the ground up, their chosen fields of study. Participants learn about the unique aspects of graduate study that distinguish it from the undergraduate experience. Examples of internship activities include attending graduate school classes; shadowing graduate student teaching and research assistants; attending seminars and departmental colloquia; working with their mentors on research projects; attending meetings for graduate professional organizations and lab sessions; and discussing graduate study and career development with faculty and graduate students.
Institution:
University of Texas at Austin
Academic Level:
Graduate
Issue Area:
Outreach
Year:
2008
Designation:
Examples of Excelencia
Designation:
Honoree
Key Personnel:
Cherwitz, Richard
Address:
University of Texas at Austin
Address 2:
Department of Communication Studies
Address 3:
1 University Station A1105
City:
Austin
State:
TX
Zip:
78712-0531 Goal/Mission:
The mission of Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) is to educate "citizen-scholars"—individuals who utilize their intellectual capital to leverage social good. One of the (IE) initiatives, the Pre-Graduate School Internship program, began from a philosophy of education geared towards increasing students' awareness of the value of graduate education and enabling them to attain ownership of and accountability for their education.
Outcome:
The Pre-Graduate School Internship has been successful in bringing a new population into the graduate school pipeline and has been effective in making sure that students’ passions and professional aspirations are consciously reflected in their decisions about whether to seek advanced degrees and, if so, in which field. Each semester, between 40 to 50% of IE Pre-Grad Interns are underrepresented minorities or first-generation students. Also a 2007 Semi-Finalist.
UT's Office of Public Affairs has completed a video on the IE Pre-Graduate School Internship initiative; the video includes interns and graduate student mentors discussing their experiences with the IE program. Click here to watch the video.
Click here to watch additional IE/Mentor videos.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| 2008examples-uta_entrepreneurship.pdf | 35.4 KB |
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IE Pre-Grad Intern
Examples of ¡Excelencia! 2008: Richard Cherwitz, Director, Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium
