Brown Policy on Academic Credit

Academic Credit Explanation

Brown WILL issue credit for student summer internships provided the student creates an independent study project next semester about their experience with the internship.

Essentially, internships are not inherently academic experiences, but students can make an academic experience out of it by designing goals and objectives, supplementing the experience with text, and eventually creating a final product (a paper? a film? a performance piece?). The beauty of it is that it's up to you to develop a syllabus and the internship experience plays a great role in what you hope to "discover. Please contact a faculty member with whom you have a good relationship and discuss with them what questions/goals/objectives you hope to achieve from your internship. Keep in mind that the deadline for subsequent semesters are static at April 1st and November 8th.

Internship Policy

Brown can only provide a letter of support. The letter states that Brown supports the student in pursuing the internship and that the student can seek credit for an internship, BUT the credit is not automatically granted. You could not actually get credit right now (during the summer) for your internship since you are not enrolled at Brown simultaneously, but you could pursue getting credit next semester BASED ON your experiences.

The letter of support would allow you to pursue the internship with the idea that you could theoretically get credit for it. The letter is really more of a formality that allows the organization to hire you legally and NOT a letter that allows you to automatically get course credit for your work.

For the letter of support, please provide Peggy Chang in the Resource Center, RI Hall with the name of your supervisor, name of the organization, and the full address. She will mail it to your employer as soon as she received the information.

As for getting credit:

Students must apply for an Academic Internship (AI) or Independent Study/Group Independent Study Project (ISP/GISP) which means students are enrolled in a course which they create during the fall/spring. For the Academic Internship students will do academic course-work and working as an intern simultaneously (approximately 8-10 hrs/wk)—the two inform one another and there is some sort of academic work/project at the end of the class.

To reiterate there is no chance to get credit THIS summer, but students can also use their internship as a springboard for course-work next semester (independent study/research project) or do a Academic Internship.

For more info, please look at the AI, ISP, GISP applications

Questions?
Please contact: Peggy Chang
Curricular Resource and Academic Support Centers
Brown University
JWW 312
401 863 2419