Warren Wilson College Launches New Internship Program
Emily Cobb | April 1, 2025
Warren Wilson College (WWC) is stepping into a new long-term Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) in fall 2025 as part of its 10-year reaffirmation process with the regional accreditor Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC).
The project, which is referred to as the Career Academic Learning Launch (CALL), emerged from campus dialogues during the 2023 and 2024 school years. The primary aim is to promote career readiness by integrating experiential learning into every major, strengthening work, teaching and learning at WWC.
The goal is for every student, starting in the 2024 catalog year, to have an internship at some point during their time at WWC. Hannah Richardson, the director of internships and employer engagement, is leading the charge of this portion of the QEP.
One of the benefits is allowing students flexibility in how they secure their internship and choosing whether it is paid or unpaid.
“There's classic internships that you might find online,” Richardson said. “We allow for internships to be created out of an already part-time, paid job. So the student has a job in the summer that they're really passionate about and really want to take that job to the next level, we can work with their supervisor to make it their internship. Then the third one is if a student feels really passionately about an organization, but that organization doesn't have a position open, but they might be willing to take on a volunteer, you could turn a volunteer position into an internship.”
As historically practiced, students who intern during the academic year can swap their on-campus work hours and credit for an off-campus internship, according to Richardson. If completing an internship over the summer, students can apply for a summer stipend to support underfunded work.
Annie Jonas is the dean of the center for experiential learning and careers at WWC and leads the QEP efforts as the director. Jonas thinks CALL will benefit WWC's experiential learning and build on the work-integrated learning the work program does.
“I think when we're leaning into the whole experiential learning cycle, obviously there's a central experience, but if you don't take the time to reflect on what are the abstract learnings from that and transfer it to something else, we know students can miss out from those opportunities,” Jonas said. “I think…the QEP has an opportunity to really deeply lean into the internship and impact people's career readiness.”
Additionally, the QEP is adding a reflection component to internships, with faculty developing internship reflection courses.
Richardson believes that reflection is an important part of life and something individuals do at every major turning point. To Richardson, starting this reflection process early is vital for student success after college.
“It's good for students…we know from years and years of evidence that internships give students a leg up in the employment world after graduation,” Richardson said. “You might have a great experience, but it's hard to reflect upon it by yourself, and it's hard to then speak about that out loud. You might have done great things, but how do you talk to an employer about that thing? It's not just the transition from college to the first job, but it's the first job to the second job, the second job to the third job, and building up on that for sure.”
According to Jonas, each academic major will have a variety of experiential learning courses integrated into the program requirements. Students will then be evaluated in career readiness terms before and after courses. The college has also invested in Career Launch, an external assessment tool that students and supervisors have access to.
“[Students] will be taking a [test] to learn about what kind of competencies they have with what's professionally accepted as the competencies that employers want,” Jonas said. “That gives people kind of a snapshot of like, ‘Oh, these are areas that I could develop over these next few years.’ It gives us a sense of how our students are responding to these interventions. There's a really neat aspect to it, where students can, if they have a supervisor, also complete this career launch, and can qualify for different certificates.”
Overall, Jonas and Richardson think the QEP will help set students up for success post-graduation as well as differentiate WWC from other higher education institutions.
“I think that in the larger context of higher ed, there's a whole discussion about the value of a four-year degree at this point,” Jonas said. “I don't think we have to make things up to say that Warren Wilson prepares people well for careers and a meaningful life, but I think this is even more an opportunity for us to make that value proposition of why it's important to come here. Because we have a work program, which very few colleges have, and to have that integrated into career readiness, into the curriculum, as well as have community engagement experiences that are expected, experiences that are preparing people uniquely for a landscape of employment that is also changing. So I think we come out very much on top in terms of how we prepare students for what they can expect after graduation.”