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Internship: Project and Trainee Period

The purpose of the Project and Trainee Period is to give you the opportunity to try out the competencies acquired during the programme in a ‘real life’ context and reflect on strengths and limitations of the theories and methods you have learnt during the study programme.

Find deadlines, learning goals etc. in the course description.  Please also read the course descriptions for further information on requirements and other important formal information:

Project and Trainee Period (10 ECTS)
Link to digital form used to register for supervisor and approval of the supervisor agreement (see item 7 for deadlines)

Extended Project and Trainee Period (20 ECTS)
Link to digital form used to register for supervisor and approval of the supervisor agreement (see item 7 for deadlines)
It is not allowed to have both Project and Trainee Period and Extended Project and Trainee Period as optional courses.
It is not allowed to have both Seminar in Business Economics and Extended Project and Trainee Period as optional courses.

Find information on formalities for written assignments under "Exam".

Slides and video from the Information Meeting April 2021

Slides from the course responsible

Slides from SDU Rio

Online Information meeting about the Project and Trainee Period, April 26th from 12:15 – 13:30 
Zoomlink to follow

The contents of the course is

  • A career management workshop at SDU - see the course description for more information 12 working hours is set aside for this activity.
  • An internship in a private/public company, an association or an NGO. 
    200 hours or 27 days are set aside for solving the agreed problems in the organization for the 10 ECTS course.
    370 hours or 49 days for the 20 ECTS course.
  • Writing up a report which must adhere to common academic standards. The remaining 60/78 hours (for 10/20 ECTS, respectively) are set aside for this including supervision. 
  • The 20 ECTS course includes a literature review of approximately 250 pages of new literature. 70 hours are allocated to finding and reading this literature.
 

The internship must be related to the contents of your MSc programme profile. Further, the work to be performed during the internship must consist of appropriate tasks, i.e. mainly tasks that will allow you to apply theories and methods learnt during the programme and write up an academic report about the problemsolving process. 

The 20 ECTS course also require that new theories or methods are learned and applied.
 
The Project and Trainee period should contain these main elements:

  • Solution of one or more specific problem(s) decided by the company in collaboration with the student and a supervisor from SDU.
  • An analysis of the usefulness and the limitations of the competencies and knowledge acquired the M.Sc. in Economics and Business Administration programme relative to the selected problem, issues or routines. In other words, the tasks that you take on must allow you to reflect on how to use the knowledge and skills learnt in the programme.
  • For the 20 ECTS course, a literature review of approximately 250 pages of relevant literature outside the syllabus of the programme.

 

The student may receive SU during the study. Companies and organizations can give students in unprofitable project-oriented courses and on unpaid study stays an acknowledgment of up to DKK 3,483 a month (2024-level). If repayment/reimbursement is received, it is the student’s responsibility to ensure, whether it is taxable or not.  

 

You seek out an organization where you would like to stay for an internship. If possible, you then agree on possible tasks to solve and period as well as schedule for the stay. You may get ideas for organizations and tasks from looking into the job bank at SDU - Find info on SDUCareer.

Once you have a fairly clear picture of the tasks that you expect to work with, you need to prepare a preliminary project description including concrete and specific ideas about the focus of the project, suggested methods to be used, relevant literature as well as an outline of which compulsory courses and topics (the competencies) you expect to use during the internship.

 

There is supervision connected to the Project and Trainee Period. To get a supervisor, you must use the link to the digital form given above. First, to get the approval from the Head of the relevant research group, you need to enter your preliminary project description into the form. You should be able to account for which methods, you expect to use, which literature, and which of your compulsory courses, you expect to build on.

If the Head of the Research Group find that the content of the project is suitable for a Project and Trainee period, you will be assigned a supervisor. 

You must fill in the form before the deadline. However, we recommend that you fill in the form as early as possible. Notice that it can easily take 14 days to find a supervisor. 

 

Your supervisor and the Head of the Research Group must approve the contents and the goal for the project report before the deadline. This is a requirement for submission of the report for the exam. To get approval on time, you must, as soon as possible, contact your supervisor and discuss your project proposal with him or her.

For approval, you need to add information to the same form that you used for requesting a supervisor.

The agreement that you upload must as a minimum contain the following information:
A.
Information about the Company/Organization. You can use an agreement form from the company or you can use the agreement available at the job and career center. You must give the following information as a minimum:

  • Name of organization/company at which the internship takes place
  • Name and title of contact person at the study site
  • Period for internship
  • Working hours per week
  • Description of the work content of the internship

B. 
A preliminary project description including

  • concrete and specific ideas about the focus of the project,
  • suggested methods to be used
  • relevant literature
  • an explicit outline the compulsory courses and the topics (the competencies) that you expect to be use during the internship.
 

Registration is done via the Student Self Service as for other courses.

  1. To find a company or another organization for the project- and trainee period and agree on tasks to be solved.
  2. To fill in the digital form and get approval of the project from the Head of the Research Group before the deadline: 
    • 15 August (autumn)
    • 15 January (spring)
  3. To get the supervisor agreement approved (via the same digital form) before the deadline.
    • 1 October (autumn)
    •  1 March (spring)
  4. To participate in a workshop on career management.
    • Find information on this on Blackboard
  5. To hand in a report before the deadline.
    • Find the deadline in the plan of examinations

Questions concerning the Project and Trainee Period can be directed to the Academic Student Advisors under the menu item student counselling. You can find their contact information in the menu.

Last Updated 06.03.2024