An academic internship is an internship that is at the level of your expertise. This means that an internship should have a content element in which you can apply the skills and knowledge learned during the master programme. Academic internship preferably have a research component. Academic internship should preferably be at the level of your future job.

An internship that does not have this academic element will not be approved.

Step 1 Plan your internship

Plan your internship in time. Think about where you want to go and keep an eye on internship vacancies. See for websites on internship possibilties the suggestions in the right column. An internship in the Netherlands takes about 3 months to find, and internship abroad longer and needs about 6 months to prepare.

Step 2 Intake

When you are sure you have found an internship, plan an intake meeting with the education coordinator to discuss requirements and supervision.

Step 3 Read the courseguide

The course guide contains the structure of the intership reports, the requirements and the contract & learning agreement necessary for the internship.

An internship can vary in length, depending on a full time workweek or the assignment. You can calculate the length by looking at the amount of hours you will be spending on your internship. If this relates to the amount of ECTs hours for an internship you should be okay.

As a general rule of thumb a 24 ECT internship is about 4 months.

When in doubt, please check with study advisor.

You get a supervisor assigned via the intake meeting with the education coordinator. You can book an appointment with her online via Calendly. See the button on the right of this page to schedule an appointment.

Probably yes!

The majority of SDC students go to areas that are indicated as an area of higher risk.

Students must check the security situation and the risk involved in doing a Master thesis research in a particular country. According to the WUR travel policy, travel to areas with a higher risk requires an approved risk assessment.

Students are not allowed to leave for the field without an approved risk assesment.

Check out the travel policy for students in the right column.

The internship report contains the internship deliverables, such as a research report, a policy document, a communication plan, an evaluation report, a design, or educational material, as agreed with your supervisor(s) in the learning agreement. This is a portfolio of all the projects you worked on.

Additionally, it includes a self relfection report that is based on personal learning goals set at the beginning of the internship in the learning agreement (see doc on the right).

As an annex you can add for example the PowerPoint presentation of your obligatory presentation given at the host organization.

Your host supervisor (supervisor at the organization) will supervise your activities at the organization. He or she will provide the assessment score on your professional skills and will give your feedback during your internship.

It is important that the host supervisor is present during your internship and is able to assess you at an academic level. As such, the host supervisor must either have an academic background of seniority in terms of work experience.

At the end of your internship you will ask your host supervisor to fill in the supervision evaluation form. This is necessary as without the evaluation form we cannot assess your internship. See column on the right to download to supervision evaluation form.