Scourfield McLauchlan, Incorporating Internships into Undergraduate Political Science Coursework, Page 5
I arranged all of the internships in behalf of the students.
While this created extra
paperwork (and headaches) for me, it helped the students to feel more comfortable with the
prospect of their internship, and it allowed me to develop a working relationship with their
supervisors, something that was useful when I needed to evaluate students’ performance at the
conclusion of the campaign. I created internship application and other paperwork (including
liability waiver and supervisor evaluation form) to facilitate this process.
3
Students interned on eight campaigns throughout Tampa Bay:
Bush/Cheney,
Kerry/Edwards, Martinez for U.S. Senate, Castor for U.S. Senate, Derry for Congress, the Sierra
Club, ACT, and a statewide ballot initiative (“No on 3”). The class was almost evenly divided
between Republicans and Democrats.
The Tampa Bay region is not only the bellwether for Florida, but also it is the anchor of
the I-4 Corridor, the battleground region of the state. Both parties fought hard in Hillsborough
(Tampa) and Pinellas (St. Petersburg) Counties. All students had the opportunity to meet their
candidates at multiple events, and they had the choice of several local field offices (Bush/Cheney
and Kerry/Edwards both had multiple offices in Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties). As one
student, Karen Osborne, pointed out in her journal: “We are spoiled here in Florida. We get
plenty of opportunities to see the candidates speak.”
In addition to the campaign internships, I also sponsored other election-related activities
for the class, such as presidential debate watch parties.
4
These debate watch parties gave us
another forum in which we could watch the candidates and discuss the campaign. (These events
also turned into “earned media” events for our campus; they were covered by ABC, NBC,
3
These materials are included in Appendices I, II, and III.
4
We secured a “Crosswinds” grant from the USFSP Student Activities fund so we could order pizza and sodas for
the debate watch parties, which was an added incentive for other students and faculty on campus to join us in
watching and discussing the debates.
Convention