Internship Opportunities
The goal of the internship program is for students to improve linguistic competence and reach ILR 3 level and beyond, as well as to prepare for professional environments. The internship experience will grow and develop your skills as global professionals while widening your professional network in North Africa for future research and professional engagement and development.
Each student will complete a minimum of 200 hours:
- 140 hours in Meknes during the fall and spring semesters
- 64 hours outside Meknes (32 hours in Tangier and 32 hours in Agadir)
To avoid potential linguistic “plateauing” or “stagnation,” the program incorporates a professionalization plan that draws on a distributed concept of learning
- Students will have a “base” internship program in Meknes.
- In addition, for two weeks at a time in the middle of each semester, students will experience disparate work environments in the Northern region of Morocco (Tangier) as well as in the Southern region (Agadir).
The internship coordinator will be a useful mentor in helping you work through challenges and learn how to navigate relationships and duties at work. Often, frustrations arise in internships because students are challenged and pushed out of their linguistic and cultural comfort zones. Weekly sessions in the “Culture and the Workplace” course will provide space for students to process their experiences and develop tools to overcome these challenges.
Something to be aware of when choosing your internships: The internship opportunities in Morocco are very different from the United States. Some of your internship options will center around everyday life in Meknes providing you with opportunities to work alongside local entrepreneurs and creators. We like to think of these types of internships as cultural experiences that will not only help improve your Arabic but will also give you opportunities to explore other interests outside of your studies.
For the “base” internships in Meknes, students may choose from a wide variety of institutions in various domains. The internships will help them gain professional experience in their area of interest and improve linguistic competence through direct interactions with Moroccan professionals (workers, clients, administration, etc.).
For the off-site internships in Tangier and Agadier, students will engage with experts in the mornings in “theoretical” learning about compelling subjects pertaining to the region and spend time engaging in experiential group professional activities in the afternoons.
- Students select from a choice of field work and help plan the activities as appropriate.
- Local experts like community leaders, entrepreneurs, agriculturists, artists, academics, or activists will interact with you individually or in panels and share local knowledge and world views with you.
- Language partners from the region will help students process and reflect on their experiences of field work and their engagement with local experts on regional topics. Students will engage in their experiences and reflect on them with language partner peers from the region.
- Students will participate in a symposium at the local university or similar venue to share their experiences with local participants and to participate in another common professional practice: public speaking. Again, students will plan these in tandem with their local peers, engaging in mutual professional language socialization in the process.
Students will also take two shorter trips with planned symposia and experiential activities to nearby Rabat (the seat of Government) and Fes (a historical capital and cultural landmark of the country) and engage with Moroccan peers and experts in each city.