Planning process for your Community Engagement project that you will develop and implement during your Level 2 internship. For the project, you are to work with your internship supervisor and other colleagues to solve a very real-world problem. You will take the lead to find a REAL need out there in the community and work to develop and implement a plan to address that need. Projects will vary by agency and community. The point is that this is REAL.
Real-world problem: There is a gulf between policy and implementation:
- There is a lag between policy making and program implementation.
- We have trouble integrating what is happening in higher education and what is happening in schools.
- In higher education, they are teaching the theoretical, but in schools we need the practical.
- The policies are “beautiful,” but the implementation is the problem.
- What is “on paper” differs from what happens at schools.
- We are rolling out programs without enough training for teachers.
- Change takes time, but we do not give change enough time.
- It takes a long time to change values.
Proposal
This semester you will collaborate with your internship supervisor to select your project, identify a plan, coordinate resources, and put the plan in place to solve a problem in the community. If your Level 2 internship will be with a different agency, you should develop your plan with your new agency and the community it serves in mind.
Your written project proposal should be 2-3 pages in length. The proposals should include enough detail to convince the reader that you've found a good problem, you understand how hard it is, you've mapped out a plan for how to solve it, and you have an idea about how to evaluate the success of your implementation. Please do not be vague in your written descriptions. Following is a brief outline you might follow …
Goal
What am I going to do?
Who would benefit?
Problem Statement
Why is it hard?
How hard is it?
Previous Work
What have others tried?
Approach
What approach am I going to try?
Why do I think it will work well?
Methodology
What steps (task list) are required?
Which of these steps is particularly hard?
What to do if the hard steps don't work out?
Metrics
How will I measure success?
Summary
What will I learn by doing this project?
Sample Solution