UW-Madison’s Matt Hora has started a residency as a guest professor in the School of Education at Tianjin University in China, where he will teach and study for 2½ weeks.
Hora is an assistant professor of adult and higher education in the Department of Liberal Arts and Applied Studies, and is an affiliate with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. Hora is also a research scientist with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), and the director of UW-Madison’s Center for College-Workforce Transitions (CCWT), which is housed within WCER.
Supported by a $10,528 grant from Tianjin University, Hora will deliver guest lectures and oversee a team of faculty members and graduate students working to implement the WCER-based College Internship Study at Tianjin and at a the nearby School of Applied Sciences. The overall study, directed by Hora starting in April, uses a mixed-methods approach based on student focus groups, an online student survey and interviews with faculty members, career services professionals and local employers.
Already underway at five U.S. institutions, the study will use the data collected in China, Hora says, to inform comparative analyses of internship program design and impacts across institutional, political, socio-economic and cultural contexts. Overall, the study aims to document the effects of internship participation and program characteristics on student outcomes such as college completion, career adaptability, employment and earnings.