Internship Applied Physics

You will be working full-time in a non-academic organization for a period of 10 weeks. Internships longer than 3 months are not recommended. The internship is guided by an internal university examiner (TU Delft, Applied Sciences) and an external (company/organization) supervisor.

The student is responsible for finding an internship position. In consultation with the organization, an internship can be started any period of the year. Students are advised to start the orientation process at least 4 months in advance if planning to stay in the Netherlands, and at least 6 months if planning to go abroad. The Internship Office has an assisting, coordinating and administrative role.

During the internship you are expected to get to know the organization. To do so, you need to start gathering information about the organization of your choice prior to the start and make a list of questions you would like to have answered. During the internship you need to make time to get acquainted with other departments within the organization and interview, for example, a number of people in different parts of the organization.

IMPORTANT Criteria for Internship assignments / projects

• The internship is in principle intended as a way for students to broaden their awareness of working environments outside academia. This excludes certain organizations. For a list of allowed/not allowed options, see below.

• You need to be able to demonstrate application of academic knowledge and skills, acquired in the degree course during the internship. It is desirable for the internship to have a Physics content. However, in some cases it may be acceptable if this component is lacking, provided that the work requires problem solving or design skills for a physicist.

• The external (company/organization) supervisor should be sufficiently experienced and involved in the work of the company team or department to supervise the student.

• In order to meet the learning objectives, it is necessary that you work at least 50% of the time on location at the company/organization. Internships that are done completely remotely are not allowed.

• If the Board of Examiners has given permission to do the thesis project outside the university, the internship cannot be done at the same organization as the thesis project.

Allowed: Business, physics content; TNO (or foreign counterparts such as Fraunhofer Gesellschaft); ECN; KNMI; NFI; patent office; non-academic hospital; consultancy (provided technical/quantitative); financial analysis (provided strong quantitative).

Not allowed: university, Dutch or abroad; NWO institute (such as Amolf, DIFFER, NIKHEF, SRON) and foreign equivalents (such as Max Planck Institut, ICFO); Academic hospital (unless practical work is done similar to an internship that could be done in a 'normal' hospital, and not in combination with a thesis project in a (different) academic hospital); Nationale Denktank.

IMPORTANT: Internship approval

• Students use the ‘Internship assignment description and approval form’ to describe internship assignment. The form is submitted in Onstage for approval. The university examiner evaluates the internship assignment to ensure that the internship aligns with academic requirements and learning objectives.

• Following the approval of the assignment the UNL internship agreement needs to be completed and signed. Your internship cannot start before your UNL internship agreement has been completed and signed by you, the authorized signatory of your internship organization and by the internship coordinator of the faculty.

The university examiner is the examiner of the internship. The pass/fail grade will be determined by assessing if the learning objectives have been met through assessing a portfolio with evidence of completion of the assignment and a presentation to the university examiner.

The portfolio with evidence of completion includes: 1. the internship agreement, 2. the (company) internship report, 3. the external supervisor feedback form and 4. the internship experience report. As student you need to submit document  1, 2 and 4 in Onstage. The external supervisor will submit document 3 in Onstage.

The final part of your internship assessment is a presentation for your university examiner. Plan this presentation with your university examiner in the two weeks before the end of your internship (or maximum 2  weeks after the end of your internship). Note that if your university examiner attends your company presentation, you will still need a separate meeting with your university examiner to address the mandatory components of the university presentation (which are not addressed in the company presentation). The presentation for your university examiner can also be done online.

See the Internship Office TNW Brightspace for the detailed criteria for all the elements of the Internship assessment.

A failing grade on one of the components (portfolio or presentation) or a failing grade on one of the learning objectives can lead to a repair option or a failing grade for the internship. For example the student can be offered the opportunity to  ‘repair’ the report or redo (repair) the presentation to demonstrate that they have met the learning objective criteria. See the Internship Assessment Scheme for more details.

The official date of the completion of the internship will be the date on which the two assessment components (portfolio & final presentation) have been completed. This date is either the date of the final presentation or when the portfolio is still incomplete on the date of the final presentation (for example due to a repair), then the official date of completion will be the date on which the final portfolio document(s) have been submitted in Onstage. 

Your assessment will be processed by the Internship Office TNW as soon as they have received to following:

• all the portfolio documents (submitted via Onstage)

• the final assessment form with pass/fail grade (submitted by the university examiner in Onstage).

Note: When the nature of the project requires so, it is possible to censor parts of the report. Details like numbers and names may be left out of the report (or striked through), for example, as long as the report represents the achievements of the project and the TU Delft examiner is able to assess the internship.