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Nervous about starting at Michigan State? Worried about your class schedule, living away from home, or where to even start? The Spartan Orientation Station (SOS) is a podcast hosted by New Student Orientation staff and was created by students for students. This podcast will launch twice a week throughout the summer, and each episode will feature a unique interview with campus departments discussing their services, common misconceptions, and fun Spartan engagement opportunities. When you need help at Michigan State, it is okay to signal SOS! Don’t worry – MSU is there for you.
You're listening to the Spartan orientation station on Impact eighty nine FM, the podcast by students for students. Now this week's episode.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Spartan orientation station. Today, we're here with the College of Social Science Office for Experiential Learning. The Office for Experiential Learning helps students take their learning outside of the classroom with opportunities like internships. My name is Ella, a rising fourth year student majoring in creative advertising and a student coordinator for new student orientation, and I will be your host for today's podcast.
Speaker 3:And my name's Jonah. I'm also a rising fourth year student majoring in advertising management. I'm also a student coordinator for New Student Orientation. To begin with, can we have you guys introduce yourselves and explain what you do for the office of experiential learning?
Speaker 4:Sure. Welcome to Michigan State University, Spartans. My name is Kathy White, and I am an instructor and program manager in the College of Social Science Office for Experiential Learning. I oversee our college's national internship program, and two Michigan based internship programs, and I teach an introductory community engagement course.
Speaker 5:Hello, I'm Emily Weiner. I also work in the Office for Experiential Learning. Like Kathy, I teach classes and manage programs. My focus tends to be on our study abroads, as well as some of our on campus community engagement courses.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for telling us that. Could you tell us a little bit more about the experiential learning requirements for the College of Social Science?
Speaker 4:Sure, Ella. Before I answer the question, I think it's very important to define what is meant by experiential learning. Simply put, experiential learning is a process of learning by doing and subsequently reflecting on those experiences. It involves first engaging in real world situations, most often outside of the traditional classroom, and then reflecting on those experiences to gain a deeper understanding and insight. This approach to learning helps connect classroom theory and knowledge to practical application and fosters skills like critical thinking and problem solving.
Speaker 4:MSU considers experiential learning to be a cornerstone of undergraduate education. Now the College of Social Science Experiential Learning requirement, in its most basic terms, Ella, is any actively enrolled undergraduate student must engage in an MSU approved academic credit bearing program or activity that allows the undergraduate to apply knowledge, theories, and skills learned in the classroom to real world situations or scenarios. The three credit minimum experiential learning requirement of the college is designed to ensure that each undergraduate major has the opportunity to enhance problem solving and integrated reasoning skills through practice outside traditional brick and mortar classroom learning environment.
Speaker 3:You had mentioned that you guys work in the College of Social Science. What other programs have experiential learning requirements, and do those requirements differ from the social science requirements?
Speaker 4:It's important to note, Jonah, that every college on campus has in some form or another experiential learning programs available to their students to interact with and engage in. By required, we mean that engaging in and successfully completing an experiential learning program is a required or mandatory component for any undergraduate degree seeking student in that particular college or that particular major. Basically, folks, it's a requirement to graduate. There are certain colleges that do have an experiential learning requirement. Those include our college, the College of Social Science, the College of Arts and Letters, James Madison College, the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, otherwise known as ARCA, the College of Agricultural and Natural Resources, and the College of Natural Science.
Speaker 4:Now, Jonah, there are some colleges, like the College of Engineering or the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, that do not have a college wide requirement. Individual majors, though, in the particular college may have an experiential learning requirement for graduation. For example, the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, as a college wide policy, does not have an experiential learning requirement, but their journalism major does. While the requirements are generally consistent from college to college, we strongly advise students to discuss experiential learning requirements or opportunities if interested with their academic advisors.
Speaker 3:And are you able to work with the students in those other programs?
Speaker 4:Absolutely, Jonah. We welcome any and all undergraduate student across campus. Experiential learning programs are generally open to any undergraduate Spartan regardless of college affiliation. Having students from different colleges in our different programs undoubtedly adds to a more rich and dynamic program experience and culture, basically the tapestry of a given program. Emily and I work closely with students across campus.
Speaker 4:Emily and I also work in close collaboration with academic advisers, college communication teams, and other college units across campus to ensure students from all colleges can access and participate in experiential learning program.
Speaker 2:I know you spoke about experiential learning being available for all students. What options do students have to fulfill experiential learning requirement?
Speaker 5:So there's five areas that experiential learning tends to kinda be broken down into. The first one that people think of often is study abroad. We have hundreds of different programs across campus. Many of them are sponsored by social science, but there are many other college sponsors that have all kinds of options. We you can go to just about any country or continent that you that you wish to through a study abroad.
Speaker 5:Another area of experiential learning is study away. So those are domestic programs. So those go anywhere within The US, including currently we have students in Puerto Rico. So anywhere you can go without a passport is kind of how we like to phrase that for study away. Another option is internships.
Speaker 5:So we have both domestic and international internships. We have some that are very local here in the Lancet area, and then we have some that are as far as Tokyo and Barcelona. So lots of options for internships as well. The another area is our service learning courses. So, often those kind of fall into our community engagement courses.
Speaker 5:We have some of those on campus. Some of them do get embedded into our study abroad programs. And then the final area is research. So undergraduate research. So really, it's for all of them, as long as you're earning at least three credits, that for us fulfills the experiential learning requirement.
Speaker 5:They kind of fall into those five areas when you're thinking about experiential learning.
Speaker 3:So as a student, how would I be able to find the opportunities to fulfill those requirements?
Speaker 5:Great question. So we have lots of different ways we can give information to you. One of the ways that you get information is that Kathy and I like to send out a lot of blast emails. So keep an eye on your email. There's always new programs that are coming available.
Speaker 5:And there is change going on all the time. There will be things, you know, that we there's a new program coming available or maybe something that isn't running this year, so make sure you keep an eye on those emails. But when you're actively seeking out information, you can go directly to those programs' websites. So we have our own website on the, social science page. You can go to experiential learning and look at all of our different options.
Speaker 5:So they're all linked in there for you. Find one space that has everything. If you know that you're specifically interested in study abroad, you can go to the education abroad website look through the entire portfolio of those programs. You can also go and schedule a meeting with an adviser. So Kathy and I do serve as advisers so we can meet with students if you have interest in experiential learning whether or not you're in our college.
Speaker 5:So you don't have to be a social science student to schedule an appointment with us. Also, the education abroad office, they also do advising appointments. If you know that's something you're interested in, you can schedule an appointment with them. And they're really good about kind of looking at taking a holistic approach, look at what's best for each student, and we try to do that as well. So there's lots of ways to get access to information, but the important thing is to look and to ask if you if you wanna know and to to look early.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Thank you for providing those resources to us. When would you suggest a student begin looking for those opportunities to fulfill that requirement?
Speaker 5:We always say the sooner, the better. So from the time that you're on campus, if you know that this is a requirement you need to graduate, don't wait until your last semester. Spring semester seniors looking for programs, looking for experiential learning, that is a tough spot to be in. So, as soon as you're on campus and you're start thinking about kind of what you would wanna do with that. If you know that you wanna go abroad, that's something to start looking into early.
Speaker 5:Obviously, there's funding things you wanna look into and those kinds of things that takes longer for application processes. But really anything you're interested in doing, if you know you wanna do research, you wanna kinda find a professor you might wanna do research with. If you're looking at internships, it's it's always better to have more time to look into that, not be on a time crunch for any of those things. And oftentimes, our courses, they do fill up quickly, so you wanna make sure that you're planning ahead. There's plenty of opportunities, but the sooner you look into it, we love when we have students who come as freshmen and sophomores and just kinda wanna talk through their options, who may we don't wanna say, I I wanna do something this semester right now, but I wanna see what's out there.
Speaker 5:And I guess something just to kinda, like, kinda keep in mind is you're not limited to one. You can do a lot. If you do one as a freshman and decide you love it and want something else, you can continue to do more. In my community engagement course this semester, I think about seven of my 25 students went abroad in the same semester. So you can you can stack them up.
Speaker 5:There's no limit to how many experiential learning you can do. We always say you could do something every single semester including the summer if you wanted to. So there's lots of options available, but please, please, please do not wait until you're trying to graduate and know that you need this requirement. Do it early.
Speaker 3:Are there any specific programs that either the two of you guys would like to highlight?
Speaker 4:Sure, Jonah. I think we have I have three programs that I'd like to highlight. The first program that I'd love for all of you incoming Spartans to be aware of is our annual spring break, domestic study away program. This year, in spring of twenty twenty five, students went to Washington DC over spring break, and, it was a food and culture themed trip that focused on documentary filmmaking. So keep your eyes open for that particular program.
Speaker 4:And locations change, annually, to give students a nice robust, kind of experience over spring break. We also have our spring semester study away program to Puerto Rico, which focuses on service learning and community engagement. And, generally, that program occurs in April, beginning of May. We also have our summer study way internship program in Flint, which is an eight week immersive internship program. Our office places students in internships based on professional, academic, and personal interests and trajectories.
Speaker 4:Again, as Emily said, students check your email regularly and like us on our socials to stay current with next year's program offerings.
Speaker 5:I guess I'll shout out a couple of our study abroad programs also. So like I said, we have a lot of spring break options if you want to study away. We also have some great study abroad options during spring break. Give a special shout out to mine. You can come to us with us to Saginacio, Belize.
Speaker 5:We spend nine days. It's wonderful. But so there's lots of really great spring break options, and that's a good time to go because you get those spring embedded courses. So as long as you're in block tuition, you're not paying an additional tuition amount or tuition fee for those. They also tend to be really embedded in kind of in that semester and really immersive in that time that you're there.
Speaker 5:So we have programs during spring break in Belize, in Mexico, in Tokyo, in South Korea. In the past, we've gone to Cambodia. So there's lots of options, and we're adding more all the time. So spring break's a really great option to look into, especially if you're kinda wanna dip your toe into study abroad. It's only nine days.
Speaker 5:If you don't wanna commit to whole semester, that's a good way to kinda get into it. And then I also wanna shout out our our community engagement courses. So those are on campus courses where you are enrolled here and then you get involved in the local Greater Lansing community, which is a really nice way to kind of get get involved, connect with the community that you're gonna be part of for the next four years, or if you're like us, much longer than that. So, those are great options to look into as well. But, yeah, we had to get have a good a good shout out for for our homegrown programs, the ones that come right out of our office.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. It's also important to note, to incoming students that most of these programs, study away and study abroad, do feature scholarships. So there are opportunities for students to be proactive and apply for scholarships to defray any costs that might be associated with participating in these programs. Additionally, most of our programs that run-in the fall and the spring can fall under block rate tuition. So it's really imperative that students speak to their academic advisors about planning both time wise, academically, and financially for participation in these programs.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much for telling us about those programs and opportunities, whether it's worldwide or straight from home. Could you tell us a little bit about your favorite thing about working at MSU? For me, Ella, the best part of working at MSU is helping to shape future generations of learners, scholars, and practitioners. I'm very fortunate in that respect, both professionally and personally. I teach, guide, and support students.
Speaker 4:I help them grow and succeed. I am able to witness young minds transforming into confident and educated professionals. Knowing that I played a part in their journey is quite a satisfying feeling. It's the students and the community.
Speaker 5:I think for me, it stems from having been a Spartan myself. So I came here as an undergrad. I graduated in 2017. I had a wonderful experience. I always felt very connected to the Spartan family and to Michigan State.
Speaker 5:And then I went out in the world, and I was working for six years before I came back. And I think in that time, I really realized that while, you know, that those connections really stay with you and that so much that MSU gave to me. And so it's been really exciting to be able to now give back to that community and see that next generation of students get great new opportunities and get to kind of explore all the new things that we'll get to to offer to students and and see as they grow and go on to achieve whatever it is they're looking for post post college. But hopefully, all that they all stay part of Spartan family. But, yeah, it's been great to to be back.
Speaker 5:It hasn't been that long, but it's been good.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you for joining us today, and thank you for listening at home.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode of the Spartan orientation station on Impact eighty nine FM. Let us know what you think by connecting with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram at MSU underscore NSO.