Abstract:

Nowadays technology evolves very fast. It causes that the development of new technologies requires very particular know-how, which in the most of the cases companies do not have. For this reason, companies need to resort collaboration with the university. In fact, it is increasing the number of projects where employees of both university and company are working together. As a consequence, the possibility of training students for determined high-qualified jobs/tasks developed in specific companies is of great interest for the latter. However, in Spain, it is found that in general, the university does not offer so many training programs for students in order to introduce them to the typical industry Research and Development (R&D) activities. This makes difficult the direct incorporation of the students into the working world.

In this regard, since the establishment of Bologna degree plans (2010), the University of Valladolid offers a program of internships in which students can, for the first time, collaborate in a project with simultaneously both the university and a company. This overcomes this lack of practical and technical training mentioned above. These internships consist of a small project in which the student faces a real industrial problem proposed by a Company, looking for potential solutions by researching in the university. In this experience, they developed some new skills that will help them in their professional future such as experiment design, handling of different equipment, interpretation of results, teamwork, oral defense, etc. Additionally, this small project can be extendable to the final degree project of the student. They can deepen into the study leading to the redaction of their final degree project that could be even continued in either university or industry. Consequently, those students will be able to incorporate into the working world as soon as they finished the degree.

In this communication, it is explained how this internship is developed from the focus of the University of Valladolid. Some internship projects performed in the last years are explained, providing specific details about their development and impact on the student’s training. The study is focused on the physics degree of the University of Valladolid. Moreover, the possibility of extending these research projects in order to continue with the final degree project has been analyzed.

Keywords:

Internship, practical learning, Bologna degree plans, industrial research project.