Practicum & Internship Information

Practicum
A practicum is applied learning outside the classroom. Every student majoring in adventure education is responsible for acquiring 200 hours of practicum experience prior to doing an internship. Practicum hours can be earned from a paid or volunteer positions centered around adventure programming. 

It is anticipated that students will seek practicum hours that include opportunities to work with groups engaged in adventurous activities so that the tools of adventure education learned in the curriculum are applied.   Volunteering to trail build or work a special event should account only for a small portion of the total hours. 

Guidelines:

• Isolated experiences such as special events may only be utilized for 1/3 (67 hours) of the 200 required hours.  Examples include: volunteering at a local rock gym, volunteering at a camp for a special event or following a river trip down with a local rafting company and assisting where appropriate.
  
• The remaining 2/3 (133 hours) must be from no more than two adventure program agencies.
  
• Students are responsible to log and get information on each new experience to their advisor, who will hold the master log for each student.
  
• Each student must report agency contact information, date and description of service, description of how the experience contributes to their professional growth, as well as length of service - to be entered in to the master log.
  
• All hours, before being put in the master log, must be approved by the student's advisor.
  
• It is the student's responsibility to keep track of hours in a practicum log form and to set up practicum experiences. Agencies may be found on the "practicum/internship" database available in the career center or by the student independently.

Internships
All adventure education students must complete a 9-12 credit internship. Please take the time to review the internship manual, which provides policies and procedures to complete your internship.

Internships are offered by many organizations. You can visit Career Services at GMC or search our list of external internship organizations that meet the GMC standards for sponsoring student interns.