Get ready for an empowering internship experience! 🚀

This course is your support system—designed to equip you with essential skills, training, and guidance throughout your internship and in your future career.

Meetings: 4-5 group sessions plus 1:1s with your Professor, anytime you need!

Your Professor isn't just your teacher--they're also your internship coach! They're here to guide you throughout your internship, offering personalized guidance and solutions.

Example: If your internship lacks meaningful work, reach out! Your Professor will help you manage up to navigate the situation, teaching you how to showcase initiative and earn your supervisor's trust.

Topics:

• Set goals for your internship
• Explore common challenges and opportunities in the workplace
• Communicate effectively with co-workers
• Build awareness of diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in the workplace
• Reflect on projects and share experiences
• Extensive guidance and mentorship from your professor/coach throughout your internship

Not your traditional courses!
In 15 weeks, you'll go on 15+ site visits and engage with influential decision makers.

Your internship can span any area of interest! 
Currently we offer seminars tailored to the following concentrations:

• American Politics
• Foreign Policy
• Law + Social Justice
• Global Economics & Business

Immersive Seminars

Please select your seminars from the list below:

• U.S. Presidency
  Concentrations: American Politics, Justice + Law
  
  Seminar Description: Do executive orders undermine democracy? Should the president be limited to two terms? May the president pardon himself? In this course, we will take an in-depth look at the presidency from three complementary perspectives. First, we will undertake a broad, historical overview of the institution and the men who have served as president. Second, we will examine classic political science texts to track the evolution of our understanding of the job. Third, we will conduct an in-depth analysis of key issues facing the modern chief executive, and then discuss how recent presidents have handled them. 
• International Peace + Security
  Concentrations: Foreign Policy/International Relations
  
  Seminar Description: The course will introduce students to the major concepts and issues currently shaping the fields of international peace, conflict and security studies. In this course, students will analyze a variety of contemporary conflict issues and challenges to peace to gain a better understanding of the threats that states and communities face in the 21st century. Over the duration of the semester students will explore key challenges to peace and the main strategies for responding to conflicts and learn how to recognize and critique the assumptions upon which these strategies rest. The topics include classic security concerns ranging from causes of violent conflicts to terrorism, but also a broad range of extended challenges to human security including topics related to environmental, health, gender, and resource security.
• Criminal Legal System: Mass Incarceration and Racial Disparity
  Concentrations: Law + Social Justice, American Politics
  
  Seminar Description: This course will explore the roots of mass incarceration and racial disparity in the Criminal Legal System. The course will critically analyze policing that precedes incarceration, and recent calls for defunding the police. Students will learn the intersections of public law and how it impacts the way society is policed and has led to a massive increase of those incarcerated particularly of underrepresented racial and social identities. Students will discover the foundations of rioting historically and recently that challenge the underpinnings of how our society has its laws enforced.
• Globalization in Crisis
  Concentrations: International Business, Law + Organization Policy Issues
  
  Seminar Description: This course explores business, legal and institutional policy issues arising in the interdependent global economy. The class discussions focus on current events and academic and policy research on international actors including multinational firms, civic groups, states, and international organizations. The weekly topics include growing inequality, the COVID pandemic, the infodemic, vaccine nationalism, climate change, economic and sustainable development, taxing and regulating big tech and big pharma, financial crises, trade protectionism, a rising China, clean and affordable water as a human right, and corruption. In the class sessions, we will concentrate on globalization’s complex problems and analyze the policy solutions.
• U.S. Public Policy
  Concentrations: American Politics
  
  Seminar Description: This course focuses on practical politics in Washington, DC. It applies public policy models and theories to current debates over the environment, immigration, economic policy, and more. Students learn primarily through assigned readings, documentaries, and meetings with policy experts.
• U.S. in an Era of Greater Power Competition
  Concentrations: American Politics, Foreign Policy/International Relations 
  
  This course examines the strategic challenges posed to the United States by the emergence of great-power competition with China and its re-emergence with Russia. It begins with an historical overview of US relations with China and Russia. It then explores the driving factors behind contemporary Chinese and Russian domestic politics and foreign policies. Next, it investigates Chinese and Russian efforts to extend their influence into critical regions of the world and functional areas such as energy markets, as well as the challenges this behavior poses to US, allied, and partner interests. The course concludes with a discussion of possible future outcomes in the context of American and allied responses.

Business CoursesFall & Spring Option

Maximize your business potential with WSP's Global Economics & Business Track. Get a competitive edge through a combination of experiential WSP seminars, business courses at American University's prestigious Kogod School of Business, and a business-focused internship.

• WSP seminars
• Upper-level business courses
• Professional business intership
  You'll land a business-focused internship in Washington, D.C. with the guidance of expert career coaches from the Kogod School of Business.

Questions?
Email us at washsem@american.edu

Option I
15 credits

• Internship + Internship course (4 credits)
• WSP Seminars (4 credits each)
  • Required: Globalization in Crisis: International Business, Law, and Organization Policy Issues
  • 1 additional WSP seminar of your choice
• 1 business course at Kogod School of Business
  See Fall 2023 course listing below.

Option II
14 credits

• Internship + Internship course (4 credits)
• WSP Seminar (4 credits)
  Globalization in Crisis: International Business, Law, and Organization Policy Issues
• 2 business courses at Kogod School of Business (3 credits each)
  See Fall 2023 course listing below.

Elective Business Courses

• Accounting & Taxation
  • ACCT-551-001: Forensic Accounting
  • ACCT-560-001: Government & Not-for-Profit Accounting
• Finance & Real Estate
  • FIN-576-003: Student-Managed Investment Fund
• International Business
  • IBUS-461-001: Alt Fin: Islamic Finance Global Economy
• Information Systems & Tech
  • ITEC-467-001: Cybersecurity Governance
  • ITEC-470-001: Database and Big Data
  • ITEC-496-001: Futures/Foresight/Sustainability
• Management
  • KSB-496-001: Invest Strategic Philanthropy
  • MGMT-301-001: The Entertainment Industry
  • MGMT-304-001: Protecting the Creative Class
  • MGMT-361-001: Global Entrepreneurship
  • MGMT-409-001: Leading High Performance Teams
  • MGMT-471-001: Peace Through Entrepreneurship
  • MGMT-496-001: Sustainable Entrepreneurship
• Marketing
  • MKTG-301-002: Consumer Behavior
  • MKTG-311-001: Foundations of Digital Marketing
  • MKTG-421-001: Brand Management
  • MKTG-541-001: Sports Marketing Management
  • MKTG-551-001: Marketing for Social Change

We offer even more courses!
Reach out to us at washsem@american.edu for more information.

Our summer internship course is a dynamic combination of career readiness content that will support you in your internship. It also features 4+ site visits to DC area ogranizations to help you expand your professional network.

You can choose to receive 3 credits for your internship through this course or simply take it as a non-credit course.

• Internship Course

  • Credits: 3 credits
  • Site Visits + Speakers: 4+ site visits + speakers from different organizations. Visit DC organizations to expand your professional network.
  • Career Readiness Content: 3 classes
    Includes goal-setting, workplace communication, diversity awareness, reflection on projects, and coaching through challenges + opportunities.