As part of the yearly Founder’s Day celebration, students are asked to participate in an essay contest that proposes a project that aims to improve the Simmons experience. Last year’s winner, Marie Ledger ’12, advanced the idea of an internship database that would provide prospective interns at Simmons with feedback on internship experiences from other students and create a way for current students and alumnae/i to network.

After President Drinan selected Marie’s essay, the Career Education Center (CEC) started work on planning and implementing the database. Once the CEC had proposed building the database into CareerLink, they partnered with Technology to identify a vendor to configure the database and to begin work on a rollout and communication strategy.

As of January 2013, the Peer Internship Network is set up and the team is gathering internship feedback from students and alumnae/i to populate it. The database will contain information about the student who submitted the internship listing, basic information about the employer, whether the internship is for-credit and/or paid, and a description and rating of the experience. If you have past internship experience and you’d like to contribute, please log in to CareerLink and see the information at the top of the screen.

Once the Peer Internship Network is officially unveiled, we’ll be spreading the word on campus and online. Keep an eye on Simmons Connection for more information.