Dec 10, 2015 By Kimmi Baston executive Editor 3 min read

Every summer, dozens of Waynesburg University students complete internships as a part of their complete education. 

Much of the time, the internships count for credit toward their major or minor field of study.

The process is largely the same, regardless of the students’ varying disciplines. During the spring before the internship, they register for an internship course for the following fall semester, worth upwards of three credit hours. They complete the internship, keeping records as required by their department and take the corresponding course in the fall to unpack the results of the experience.

Now, the university is making a change to the way credits are assigned for summer internships. Students completing an internship during the summer months must be registered for one credit hour during the summer.

“What we wanted to do is to make sure that all of our students who are interning in the summer were officially registered with the university, to make sure they are covered by the university’s insurance,” said Dr. Jacquelyn Core, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at the university.

Core said there haven’t been any issues with insurance coverage for student interns, but the university wanted to ensure that, should a situation arise, there is no doubt that students are affiliated with the institution during those summer months.

The internship process for students will remain largely unchanged. 

They will continue to register for the correct number of internship credit hours for the fall. The registrar will then switch one credit hour from the fall to the summer. As such, the total amount of credit taken for the internship will not change, it will just be split between the summer and fall registration periods. Because of this, students will not pay for the credit during the summer.

“It should not have any functional impact on the students at all,” said Core. “It’s not any expense to the students, it’s just to make sure that they are officially affiliated with the university to provide them with affiliation and the protection that provides as a part of their internship.”

Internships that are not being taken for credit, or are ‘unofficial,’ are not subject to these changes.

The alteration to the way internship credits are assigned began last summer, but students interning last summer were not aware of the change.

“When we started thinking about it, we went ahead and switched students and made notification to them that we did it,” said Core. “But the students didn’t know in advance. We said, ‘we are about to change your schedule, this is what we’re doing and there isn’t going to be a cost to you.'”

Beginning the summer of 2016, students will be aware of the change prior to their internship. 

Core emphasized that the new policy is for safety’s sake, more than anything.

“It’s not that we thought necessarily that they wouldn’t be covered, it’s that we wanted to make sure that there could be no argument that they weren’t,” said Core. 

Core said that students who have been so far affected generally feel positively about it.

“For the most part students were really grateful,” said Core. “I think they’re glad that people are thinking about them and making sure that they’re taken care of and protected.”