Wildcat Internship Survey Background

From Spring 2015 to Spring 2017, a team of representatives from Undergraduate Studies, Student Life, academic colleges, Information Technology Services, Office of Assessment, and other key stakeholders worked together to develop an efficient data collection and reporting process for K-State undergraduate student internships. The new process leveraged existing technologies to provide reliable metrics and next-generation evidence that could be shared both internally and externally.

To encourage student participation, the Wildcat Internships (WINS) survey was limited to the following questions for university-wide reporting:

1. Did you participate in an internship during (academic year)?
2. Did you receive college credit for your internship?
3. What was the company you interned with?
4. What was the city location of your internship?
5. What was the state/country location of your internship?

Participating colleges had the option to add up to five additional questions, e.g., job titles, wages, start/end dates, quality of experience and more.

For the purposes of the survey, internships were defined as "educationally-related work experiences that integrate knowledge and theory with practical application and skill development in professional settings." For tracking purposes the term, "internship" included internship, co-op, field experience, and practicum.

The WINS survey is distributed annually in October to students. In the first administration, colleges had the option to place an enrollment hold to prompt student participation.

• Agriculture
• Architecture, Planning & Design*
• Arts and Sciences
• Business Administration*
• Engineering*
• Health and Human Sciences
• Technology and Aviation*

*First colleges to place enrollment holds.

New freshmen were purposely excluded from the cohort group. The only graduate students initially surveyed were from Architecture, Planning & Design and Business Administration. The College of Education utilized their existing data collection processes.

The following technologies are utilized and extended to implement the internship collection and reporting processes:

• Qualtrics – Survey instrument.
• KSIS – Used to generate cohort of students to be surveyed, administration of enrollment hold, system of record for internship and student data.
• WebMethods – Provided real-time data integration between Qualtrics and KSIS to release the hold immediately after the student completed the survey.
• Power BI – Used to generate interactive dashboards to illustrate and analyze the resulting data.

The Senior Survey administered annually by the Office of Assessment suggests that approximately 50% of graduating students have had one or more internships during their years as an undergraduate. The WINS data collected for the first several years should be viewed as baseline data. Note that the survey results not representative of the entire student population, especially since some data from the Colleges of Agriculture and Education are not included in all reports. To enhance the collection of internship data from graduating seniors, some WINS data is also imported from the university’s Senior Survey. In addition, note that some colleges are over-represented in this data given different response rates with and without enrollment holds.

Ultimately, learning more about internship experiences will help K-State students expand their connections with employers, provide academic advisors with internship ideas for students, strengthen university ties with industry, and demonstrate K-State’s commitment to the career readiness of its students. If you have additional questions about the WINS survey results, please contact the Career Center.

The Student Internship Tracking Initiative planning team initially included K-State representatives from:

• Career Center
• College of Agriculture
• College of Architecture, Planning & Design
• College of Arts and Sciences
• College of Business Administration
• College of Education
• College of Engineering
• College of Health and Human Sciences
• Global Campus
• Information Systems Office
• Information Technology Services
• International Student and Scholar Services
• Office of Assessment
• Office of Corporate Engagement
• Office of Planning and Analysis
• Office of Student Activities and Services
• Office of Student Financial Aid
• Office of the Registrar
• Polytechnic Campus
• Vice President of Student Life
• Vice Provost of Undergraduate Studies