January 2016 - Parks & Recreation - 47

graduating from an accredited institution complete a 400-hour internship
prior to graduation. The first step for
practitioners to make in helping train
future professionals is to offer professional internships. If an agency does
not already have an internship program, professionals working for that
agency should fight to secure one (or
more). These can be paid or unpaid,
but paid is obviously preferable and
can help an agency recruit a more
qualified or more fully developed budding professional. While everyone realizes money is often tight for many
departments, professionals can probably remember how much they valued
a paid internship over an unpaid one.
Something to consider is that students
are still paying tuition while they complete their internships and most interns
are not allowed to work an additional
paying job while working as an intern.
Ideally, students would have
worked part-time jobs and seasonal
summer jobs prior to their internship in order to best prepare them for
an internship. Not all students heed
their professors' advice on this topic,
however. The second step, then, is to
help provide a variety of internship
experiences that might best match
a student's background with his or
her professional interests. For example, internships are needed for those
students who have less work experience in the field. Perhaps they were
student athletes or were required to
support themselves in school and
worked as a waiter/waitress where
they could earn more money or get
more regular hours.
The third step involves creating a job
description that focuses on acquiring
professional skills that will help prepare students for the next step in their

career. While being a camp counselor
might indeed provide valuable experience, the necessary skills and experiences being sought, such as hiring,
training, scheduling, supervising and
evaluating part-time staff, are those
found on a full-time job description. If
interns lack enough experience to give
them direct responsibility for such
actions, perhaps have them assist an
experienced employee or supervisor.
When deciding what experiences to
offer an intern, consider what that intern needs to know in order to secure
his or her next position.
Performance Evaluations of Interns
In addition to providing internships
with valuable experiences, great internships provide direct supervision
and feedback. As part of the internship process, universities typically require internship supervisors to provide
formal feedback through midterm
and/or final performance evaluations.
Most university professors agree that
these evaluations are an important
part of the internship experience and
are often overlooked by internship supervisors who are short on time. This
may be the student's first formal performance evaluation and, as such, can
be an extremely enlightening process
for a new professional interested in developing his or her skills.
While evaluating performance can
be daunting for new professionals
who may also be performing their first
evaluation, resources such as Paul
Falcone's book, 2600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews, can be helpful
in providing the valuable comments
that accompany the scores given to
the intern. Caution should be taken,
however, not to hold back feedback
for use in a performance evaluation.

Regular, informal feedback should
also be given throughout the internship. The most important component
in an effective internship evaluation is
that the supervisor has had multiple
interactions with the intern throughout the internship. An evaluation that
consists of all performance ratings at
the same level and/or has few supporting comments suggests that the
supervisor has very little knowledge
of the intern's performance. Regular
supervision and informal feedback
go hand in hand with a constructive
performance evaluation that has the
capability of shaping that intern's professional career.
In summary, universities and park
and recreation agencies must work
together to fully develop aspiring
recreation professionals. If you are a
park and recreation professional who
works with interns, ask yourself if you
are really doing all you can to mentor
them and help them to succeed in our
industry. If so, could you find a way to
create another internship that would
be valuable for a developing professional and your agency? If not, what
can you do to improve that experience
so it is more valuable? On the other
hand, if you are a park and recreation
professional at an agency that does
not have internship positions, find out
what you can do to create one. In any
of these situations, university professors are more than happy to help you
develop a solid job description, recruit
potential applicants or improve the
evaluation process. Just contact the
recreation program at a school near
you and ask for help.
Stephanie T. West, Ph.D., is a Professor of
Recreation Management at Appalachian
State University (westst@appstate.edu).

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