New Researchers Get Their Feet Wet in ACT Summer Internship Program

The program offers a unique opportunity for interns to work directly with mentors on projects that can affect ACT programs and services. ACT benefits from the research and the opportunity to meet up-and-coming educational researchers. The interns get to apply their knowledge in a real-world setting. They also start to build a network among professionals who will soon be their colleagues.

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“The psychometric field is relatively small, so these are people who will be interacting with each other professionally for a long time,” Harris said. “A lot of the interns don’t have a lot of contact even with other students in their field, so when they come here, it’s like a candy shop. There are so many people here with so much expertise. It’s really a wonderful networking opportunity.”

Harris has served as a mentor to summer interns herself. She co-mentored one, Jee-Seon Kim, with her colleague, the late Bradley Hanson.

“As a graduate student, it was a great opportunity to work with established researchers and to deal with real-world problems. Deb has been a good friend of mine since then, and I had worked closely with Brad for years after my internship until his premature death in 2002. We presented my intern project at the American Educational Research Association conference and later published it as a paper in Applied Psychological Measurement,” Kim said.

Now an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Kim has been recommending the program to her students for years. She said she found many aspects of the internship program beneficial.

“I liked a lot of things. Working with my mentors on a project was the best part. It was very interesting to meet other students in similar graduate programs at different universities. I appreciated the direct contact with a number of research groups at ACT. Formal and informal gatherings with individuals at ACT and other interns were fun and informative. We shared research ideas and discussed practical issues in educational testing. I also enjoyed meeting faculty members in Iowa Testing Programs at The University of Iowa.”

The demand for the ACT Summer Internship Program has been growing. More than 100 applications are received each year, and organizers are discussing how the program should grow.

“A lot more companies are offering measurement internships now, so there is competition, but our applications keep growing. We have had great success with getting our first choices for interns,” Harris said. “The goal is to continue to recruit top graduate students and to provide them with opportunities to perform relevant research.”

Kim offered a suggestion. “It would be useful for students to know about career opportunities at ACT and other comparable institutions. Many students in educational measurement programs do not have a clear career plan until near graduation, partly because they do not know what paths are available, and what it takes to build a successful career in different work environments. If the internship can offer relevant information, I think it will be very beneficial for both students and ACT.”

Several former interns have turned their experience into full-time employment at ACT. One of them is Richard Sullivan, who works as program development associate in Professional Development Solutions. His manager now was his mentor when he was an intern.

“It really was a seamless transition from the internship to a part-time research assistant position while I continued my graduate program, and then to a full-time job,” Sullivan said. He said the program gave him exactly what he needed toward the end of his doctoral studies—a mentor to talk to about his work and a dissertation topic. “The idea for my dissertation actually grew out of my exposure to ACT,” he said.

ACT benefited from his internship, too.

“My summer project solved a technical problem that was important to the work ACT does. The results of that summer project continue to be important to the test development work that I do as a full-time employee,” Sullivan said. “The projects were designed to fit within the summer time frame so the company could get feedback by the end of the summer. ACT expected results, and I was offered all the resources necessary to achieve results: computer technology, data, and a helpful staff.”

Applications for the 2006 Summer Internship Program are due February 10. For more information go to www.act.org/humanresources/jobs/intern.html or call 319/337-1531.