Overview

Queens Podcast Lab (QPL) offers for-credit internships to Queens College students pursuing arts, journalism, mass communications, or marketing careers. 

The QPL Internship Program is for students interested in mass communications careers.  We offer: 

• Training in the software, creative practices, and business practices used by professional content creators,
• A cooperative education program in which students develop their skills through real-world projects,
• Resources, instruction, and collaboration opportunities to build your professional portfolio,
• Career support to help strengthen our students’ job market candidacy, including special advising, a QPL web listing with a title, and the resources, collaboration, and information-sharing opportunities that arise from being part of a creative community. 
• An innovative asynchronous course that is done mainly on the student’s preferred schedule.

Our philosophy is that students pursuing careers in these fields are best served by making real-world content on new media platforms.  It is the best avenue for learning how to create content and build creative enterprises. It is also an effective job market strategy in mass communications markets for talented CUNY students. 

The job market believes there are good CUNY students, but that quality is variable.  When faced with a CUNY applicant, employers are tasked with discerning whether the applicant is one of our high-performing students.  By developing a track record of good digital content, our interns strive to stand out as the best of what our institution can offer.  We have seen QC students get jobs and internships with major media companies – on the level of DreamWorks, the New York Times, and NPR –  after proving their content creation chops on the Internet.

See Appendix A for major job markets towards which this program is oriented.

How Does It Work?

• Interns are admitted to the program and are matched to jobs.
• The intern and supervising faculty negotiate work commitments.  Credit given is related to weekly hours worked during the semester.[1]
• All interns receive access to training and resources related to the creative process, business tasks, and job market-related skills and knowledge. 
• The group will form a community that shares information and collaborates through Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
• Student catalogs all work performed on the internship in a professional portfolio hosted on CUNY Academic Commons

Currently Available CoursesSOC 325: Fieldwork with Joseph Cohen. SOC 325.1 for one credit, SOC 325.2 for two credits, and SOC 325.3 for three credits.DATA 788: Cooperative Educational Field Placement with Joseph Cohen or Ryan Sperry.  DATA 7881 for one credit, DATA 7882 for two credits, DATA 7883 for three credits, DATA 7884 for four credits, DATA 7885 for five credits, and DATA 7886 for six credits.ENG 299: Internships with Jason Tougaw.  Available for one, two, or three credits.English: Independent Study with Jason Tougaw

At the end of the semester, the Internship Faculty will meet to assess the student’s portfolio and the report of their supervising faculty member.  This grade will be the student’s final grade in the Program.

Schedule

The internship begins on January 25

• Your work will be done remotely and mostly on flex time
• The entire team will meet weekly on Zoom.  The specific time is to be determined.  That meeting will count as 30 minutes of your weekly hours.
• The team will join a Microsoft Teams group to serve as a platform for day-to-day information-sharing and communications.

Spring 2023 Partners

The Internship Program is partnering with the following departments and programs this semester:

• The Knight News and QC Pod, Queens College’s student newspaper and college radio-style podcast.  Supervising Faculty: Jason Tougaw and Joseph Cohen
• The Queens Podcast Lab, a program that develops educational resources for aspiring online content creators. Supervising Faculty: Joseph Cohen and Jason Tougaw
• The Annex Sociology Podcast, a live stream, and podcast about academic sociology.  Supervising Faculty: Joseph Cohen
• The Department of Sociology, one of America’s 25 largest sociology programs.  Supervising Faculty: Joseph Cohen
• The Data Analytics and Applied Social Research Program, a specialty program that trains. Supervising Faculty: Joseph Cohen students how to use data science to improve businesses, government programs, or nonprofits.  Supervising Faculty: Ryan Sperry

Jobs Available in Spring 2023

The table below describes jobs available this Spring, listed by Partners.  See Appendix B for a listing by job type.

The QC Pod/Knight News

Project Lead:  Run Queens College’s student-run podcast.  Create one podcast episode per month.  Maintain and develop the QC Pod website on Academic Commons.  Train, administer, and collaborate with other podcasters and sound editors on the QC Pod.  Software: WordPress, Audacity, Blog2Social, Adobe Express (3+ cr.) 

Podcaster:  Conceive and produce podcast episodes on the Queens College community. Students will conceive, orchestrate, and produce one 20-minute podcast episode per month (1 cr.), biweekly (2 cr.), or weekly (3 cr.).  Episodes must be in line with podcast goals and format, as deemed by the partner.  The podcaster must also write ~300-word show page copy and 250-character social media copy for the episode. Software: WordPress, Blog2Social, Audacity, Inoreader, Evernote, Zoom

Social Content Curator:  Write and schedule 100 timely, unique, quality social media posts of interest to the QC community.  Posts must be recent, original, and thoughtfully curated to deliver definable value to the community, with a deliberate strategy to deliver value and generate engagement and virality.  Software: Blog2Social, Inoreader, Evernote. (1 cr.)

Department of Sociology

Social/Webmaster. Build Queens College sociology’s website.  Update web and social media streams with department-relevant news and announcements.  Build online resources that help current and prospective students, and bring sociology to the Queens community (2 cr.)

Social Content Curator: Write and schedule 100 timely, unique, quality social media posts of interest to the QC sociology community (faculty, students, alumni).  Posts must be recent, original, and thoughtfully curated to deliver definable value to the community, with a deliberate strategy to deliver value and generate engagement and virality.  Software: Blog2Social, Inoreader, Evernote. (1 cr.)

Blogger.  The student will write one original, 500 – 1000 word blog post per week for each credit.  Posts must align with the blog’s goals and format, as determined by the partner.  All posts should be search engine optimized and include public domain or AI-generated images. (1 cr.)

The Annex Sociology Podcast

Social/Webmaster. Maintain and develop The Annex website: Post news episodes, blog posts, and social media posts.  Add web features.  Help create a hub for academic sociology on the open Internet (1-3 cr., depending on responsibilities assumed)

Producer.  Book guests, show preparation, write copy for show page and social media, production of supplemental media or content. (3 cr.)

Sound Editor.  Produce a clean, formatted version of a podcast recording of recording sessions.  Will cut one episode of about 1 hour per week.  (2 – 3 cr.)

Queens Podcast Lab

YouTuber.  Develop a six-part Livestream series in which the student produces, hosts, posts, and promotes interviews with media professionals about creative- and career-relevant topics.  Including supplemental media and web development.  Software: WordPress, Blog2Press, Audacity, Zoom, OBS, YouTube (1-3 cr., depending on roles assumed)

Social/Webmaster. Maintain and develop The Queens Podcast Lab’swebsite.  Post news episodes, blog posts, live events, and social media posts.  Add web features.  Help create a hub for content creation at Queens College (1-3 cr., depending on responsibilities assumed)

Social Content Curator: Write and schedule 100 timely, unique, quality social media posts of interest to the QPL community (faculty, students, alumni).  Posts must be recent, original, and thoughtfully curated to deliver definable value to the community, with a deliberate strategy to deliver value and generate engagement and virality.  Software: Blog2Social, Inoreader, Evernote. (1 cr.)

Program in Data Analytics

YouTuber.  Develop a six-part Livestream series in which the student produces, hosts, posts, and promotes interviews with QC Data Analytics alumni about methodological- and career-relevant topics.  Including supplemental media and web development.  Software: WordPress, Blog2Press, Audacity, Zoom, OBS, YouTube (1-3 cr., depending on roles assumed)

Social Content Curator: Write and schedule 100 timely, unique, quality social media posts of interest to the QC Analytics community (faculty, students, alumni).  Posts must be recent, original, and thoughtfully curated to deliver definable value to the community, with a deliberate strategy to deliver value and generate engagement and virality.  Software: Blog2Social, Inoreader, Evernote.

Social/Webmaster. Build Queens College Analytics’ website.  Update web and social media streams with department-relevant news and announcements.  Build online resources that help current and prospective students, and bring sociology to the Queens community (2 cr.)

Blogger.  The student will write one original, 500 – 1000 word blog post per week for each credit.  Posts must align with the blog’s goals and format, as determined by the partner.  All posts should be search engine optimized and include public domain or AI-generated images. (1 cr.)

Build an Internship that Suits You

Partner	Podcaster	Blogger	Producer	YouTuber	Social/Webmaster	Sound Editor	Social Content Curator	Project Lead
Knight News/QC Pod	x	x				x	x	x
Queens Podcast Lab		x		x	x		x
Annex Sociology Podcast			x		x	x
Department of Sociology		x			x		x
Data Analytics and Applied Social Research		x		x	x		x

You can combine different jobs to create an internship better tailored to your skills and career interests.  For example:

• “The Campus Journalist”: Blogger + Social Content Curator for Knight News/QC Pod
• “The Public Sociologist”: Webmaster + Blogger + Social Content Curator for Department of Sociology
• “The Media Webmaster”: Queens Podcast Lab and Annex Podcast Social/Webmaster
• “Campus Social Media Influencer”: Social Content Curator for the Knight News/QC Pod, Queens Podcast Lab, and the Department of Sociology

Internship Faculty

Faculty in the 2022 Spring iteration of the QPL Internship Program include:

• Joseph Cohen, Department of Sociology
• Jason Tougaw, Department of English
• Ryan Sperry, Department of Sociology

Applications

Applications are rolling.  We will begin filling jobs immediately.  Contact Professor Joseph Cohen at jcohen@qc.cuny.edu

---

[1] 1 credit – 3 hours per week; 2 credits – 6 hours per week; 3 credits – 9 hours per week.  Grad students only, with special permission: 4 credits – 12 hours; 5 credits – 15 hours; 6 credits – 20 hours