Membership of a professional organization offers members the opportunity to advance their networking network, develop their knowledge and skills, and be involved in leadership opportunities, amongst other things. Benefits for those involved are felt and seen. Some of these benefits include a resource for maintaining professional values and standards; providing opportunities for continuing education/professional development, mentoring, networking, and collaboration; providing support for challenging issues; philanthropic efforts; and promotion of the profession.
One problem throughout many chapters has been the ability to engage and retain students within their chapter/organization. Many students, especially those in the millennial age group do not grasp or understand the importance of involvement in a professional organization. The aim of this chapter’s development and implementation of a student intern position was to combat this idea that professional organizations are not valuable. The other aim was to get rid of the “WIIFM” or “what’s in it for me” syndrome. The chapter was able to learn many lessons through the development and implementation of this program. The first student intern was able to learn through mentorship, but the chapter learned many things about old practices or beliefs to gain an increased number of participating younger members.
This presentation outlines one chapter’s journey to developing and implementing a student internship position, including the successes, failure, lessons learned, and future plans. One larger success and future plan to be discussed is the unique, innovative idea of designing and implementing a student committee. This committee was begun, designed, and run by the students increasing student participation. Students were able to lead and make suggestions to the board about activities, issues, projects that are important to them. Some of the challenges include the design of the student position. This chapter hopes to inform other chapters of these positives and areas for improvement to help ease transition and/or development for other chapters. Finally discussion surrounding the outcomes of the student intern program, student led committee, and directional goals for the chapter will be discussed.