An exception is the mandatory cooperative education program at La Guardia Community College in New York, where enrollment in three 12-week co-op placements is mandatory. Placements vary from 15 to 40 hours per week depending on the needs of the internship agency and the student's schedule. Coupled with each internship experience is a seminar, which connects particular coursework with practical application (Grubb & Badway, 1995). Students in programs with regulated internships (i.e., in health care) and evening students who presumably have jobs are exempted.
The first seminar, Co-op Prep, is completed prior to attendance at a co-op placement. Similar to co-op seminars elsewhere, this course is intended to teach students how to apply for jobs, how to present themselves in interviews, the norms of workplaces, and other skills related to gaining employment. However, because of the mandatory co-op placement, the relevance of résumés, applications, and interviewing is immediate as students begin to apply for co-op placements. Following the introductory Co-op Prep, three separate placements and seminars complement one another, with students assuming the role of "participant observer" in analyzing the structure of the organization and the behavior of its members.
In the second seminar, titled Understanding Critical Issues at Work, students apply theoretical concepts such as corporate culture, organizational schema, leadership styles, and corporate ethics. Field assignments direct students to analyze the placement site for teamwork, indicators of power and authority, corporate values, and ethical dilemmas. Fundamentals of Career Advancement, the third seminar, focuses on career challenges, formal and informal lifetime learning, career information sources, and the use of personal and professional networks. Students learn to identify and practice strategies for upward mobility used by successful executives such as seeking difficult assignments, coping with hardships, observing key people, and getting feedback on areas of strength and weakness. The final seminar focuses on career-specific applications of classroom knowledge. For instance, accounting students follow detailed directions for analyzing systems of information flow at the work site, while food service management students critique and design systems for personnel selection and supervision. Liberal arts students complete activities related to social services [II-33] or the effects of technology on modern society.[15]
A second semester Composition course links internship or capstone experiences at Southeastern Community College in Iowa, so that students use the design of projects and an understanding of the work organization as the context for writing. [II-34]
At the developmental level, few students have the opportunity for work-based learning. Only two colleges reported internships for developmental students--Penn Valley in Missouri [N] and Mt. San Antonio in California, [N] both described in Chapter 1. In both cases, courses were clustered to provide an occupational context for basic skills. These two programs were initiated through joint planning between several divisions of the college to overcome the long spells of remediation before students can meet career goals. In these unique programs, LEP students improved their proficiency at the same time that they were engaged in occupational and/or academic study.
Programs which connect work-based experiences with academic and/or occupational preparation parlay the potential learning possibilities through the timely application of theory as students learn and use knowledge related to their career goals.
[14] Several colleges identified work experience or cooperative education seminars as an example of integration reforms, and a number of catalogs list such a course; some described the course content to include topics like work ethics, career exploration, or work adjustment. But when we spoke with faculty or students enrolled in those courses, invariably the curriculum was limited to résumés, applications, interviewing, and weekly reports of hours worked; rarely was a greater understanding of work organization and behavior engendered.
[15] The four co-op seminars are directed by faculty written texts, which are variously generic to workplace analysis and specific to career majors. Text titles include Understanding Critical Issues at Work by Paul Saladino and Fundamentals of Career Advancement by Diane Ducat, [N] as well as a variety of occupationally specific texts for the final placement experience.