BY WENDY GILMARTIN
Three firms discuss how their internship programs benefit both interns and staff.
From the June 2018 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.
With summertime come internships, those short stints of employment when students get the chance to enrich their academic experience with the practicalities of the real world. Of course, it?s an exciting time for interns, seeing how it all works for the first time. But how are offices reciprocally enriched by their internship programs" Once on board, how do interns fit into an office structure, and how do they affect day-to-day workflow" Three design offices explain their approach to taking on summer interns and discuss the impacts on office culture and resources.
Interviews have been edited and condensed. EDSA

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Doug Smith, ASLA, President and Principal; Cara Critchlow, Director of Human Resources; Jill Martinez, Executive VP of Marketing
What?s the onboarding process like for interns, and where do they go from there"

CARA CRITCHLOW: So, the first week, the HR team works with a few different designers from our office, different levels, typically associate seniors, to put together a program and a schedule for their week one. The program very much outlines the design challenge for them for that week. We try to find a current project that?s happening around the office, something tangible where they can go on a local site visit or see a comparable site locally to give them de...