Professional internship

Professional Internship Preparation Seminar

This seminar is designed for first-semester students in bachelor’s and
master’s programs, to provide them with guidance and structure regarding
planning and completing their internships, and to offer them insights into
potential internship opportunities during their studies and career paths after completing their sociology
degree.
The seminar is a required course in the GKS - 1st semester Sociology bachelor’s program.

The seminar covers four main areas:

General information is provided on the structure, organization, and content of the
professional internship in the BA degree program and the elective module “Professional Practice” in the
Degree program. This information is derived from a) the
regulations (academic and examination regulations) as well as b) the accumulated
experiences.
An essential component consists of reports from the field itself. To this end,
experts present various social and organizational fields of activity
(e.g., education, industry, administration) and describe what, ideally—
but also based on experience, one can achieve with a sociological education in the respective
areas of activity.
The third component consists of testimonials from students who, upon
report on their internship experience in the form of presentation-based talks
.
The final component links the internship to the content of the sociology
by providing, over the course of several sessions, insights into various social science
on the internship as a work context
. The aim here is to examine the internship as a social event from
from the perspectives of the sociology of work, organization, and the life course, as well as psychology
. Special attention is also given here to
the graduate studies conducted by TU Dresden and other studies on the perspectives
career prospects for sociologists.

Registration for the Professional Internship Preparation Seminar takes place via Opal.

Internship and Job Opportunities

Permanent internship opportunities are available at all cultural institutions and ministries of the Free State of Saxony.
Permanent internship opportunities are available in all Directorates of the City of Dresden.
Please check the current openings, which are posted either on the
or available digitally on OPAL under “Academic Advising and Professional Internships” and in the OPAL announcements regarding job postings for the current semester
!

Internship Certification and Recognition

There are two ways to have your internship recognized:

Presentation in the internship seminar on the content of your internship and your experiences in the professional field (submission of the short “Internship Report” form as part of the presentation, along with the contract, employment reference, and the pre-filled “Internship Certificate” form)
Submission of a complete written internship report of 8–10 pages (along with the contract, employment reference, and the pre-filled “Internship Certificate” form). Please do not send any documents via email! Instead, submit your certificate, contract, and report via OPAL. The pre-filled internship verification form must be printed out and submitted to the department office (Room FAL 217; use the mailbox in front of the room).

In the GKS bachelor’s program—1st HF Sociology, credit is awarded as part of an ungraded comprehensive assignment consisting of confirmed active seminar participation prior to the start of the internship and one of the two options mentioned above (presentation with a short form or a written internship report).

Please note that only complete documents can be processed.

Approximately 2 to 3 weeks after you upload your documents, we will have processed them. If all requirements are met, we will forward the signed internship certificate directly to the Examination Office. In this case, you will not receive a message from us. If any documents are missing or the requirements are otherwise not met, you will receive an email from us and the opportunity to submit the missing documents or revise an insufficient internship report.

Important Note on the Internship Report

A central goal of the professional internship is for you to apply and reflect on the content you have learned during your studies in the professional world. Therefore, an important element of the internship report is a “critical evaluation of the internship with regard to the goals of your degree program.”
This means that you should critically reflect on your internship in the context of your sociology studies, which also involves relating the content of your internship to the content of your coursework (e.g., various sociological theories, authors, etc.) and clearly demonstrating this with appropriate citations (citation notes and bibliography).

Professional internship