UW–Madison’s Matthew Hora is the lead author of a new paper published in the Journal of Higher Education, titled “Designing Effective Internships: A Mixed-Methods Exploration of the Sociocultural Aspects of Intern Satisfaction and Development.”
Hora is an associate professor of adult and higher education with the Division of Continuing Studies and with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Policy Studies. He is also co-director of the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (CCWT).
In addition, UW–Madison’s Matthew Wolfgram, an associate researcher and principal investigator with the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research, is a co-author of the paper, along with Zi Chen, Jiahong Zhang, and Jacklyn John Fischer.
Hora says the paper focuses on “sociocultural aspects of intern learning and the importance of intentional design for these learning spaces.”
According to the paper’s abstract, the study’s results “highlight the need for colleges and employers to design internships as mentored and culturally shaped learning spaces, provide supervisor training, and consider the cultural backgrounds of students when matching them to internships.”