Learning from/with New Hampshire's Spanish‐speaking community: Building an internship program for Spanish students

Abstract This article illustrates the implementation of a pilot internship program for Spanish language students with a public‐facing component at a small, predominantly white, private liberal arts college in the northeastern U.S. This project focused on providing students with the possibility to cooperate and collaborate with organizations that closely work with the Spanish‐speaking community. Through internships at media organizations and community‐based initiatives, students had the opportunity to exercise their language skills in real‐world contexts with meaningful stakes. The results show that publicly‐engaged, project‐based learning can have a tremendous impact. However, the initiative was not sustained beyond the pilot year, pointing to a key challenge: funding and institutional support. The article includes a detailed step‐by‐step guide in designing and executing the project, along with a discussion regarding the time, labor, challenges encountered, and potential strategies for building capacity and sustaining initiatives of this nature.