Externship Program
Black Leaders Actively Changing Culture (BLACC)’s Externship Program is a paid, three-week, project-based work experience. Externs will gain practical work experience, develop professional skills, and receive coaching and support during the structured, guided short-term work experience.
Program Overview
BLACC’s Externship Program is a short-term, paid work experience for undergraduate students in the United States, who come from backgrounds that have traditionally been underrepresented in educational publishing and technology. Students selected to become an extern will:
build and practice highly-desired professional skills in educational publishing and technology.
receive mentorship and coaching while completing a guided project. Review project abstracts and details below.
gain insight into various career paths within the educational publishing and technology industry.
Work experience.
Externs gain valuable, resume-building work experience by completing a guided project that introduces the extern to key responsibilities within functional areas within Macmillan Learning.
Early connections.
By working with sponsor-coaches to complete assigned projects, externship participants can expand their professional networks. Additionally, throughout the three-week experience, externs will participate in virtual meet-ups that include other externs in their cohort, hiring managers and members of the Macmillan Learning executive team.
Industry exposure.
In addition to the externship project, during the three-week program, externs will gain valuable industry insights through interactive, virtual meet-ups with speakers from Macmillan Learning’s executive team members and department leads.
Project Abstracts
No ‘busy work’ here. Externship projects have been designed to introduce externs to key responsibilities within a team. Projects require 10-12 hours a week, over a three-week period. Review the project abstracts, review complete project details, then apply for up to three projects with a single Externship Application.
Customer Experience: Support Case Analysis
Customers expect an effortless experience. This project will help illuminate opportunities for improvement in the customer experience and ongoing product development through evaluation and analysis of customer data and feedback.
More about the Support Case Analysis Project.
Editorial: Business Plan Development
Deep understanding of customer needs is vastly important to product development, particularly when a company seeks to offer multiple solutions within a given market. This project will include conducting research on Introductory Psychology courses from Macmillan Learning and our competitors to help create a business plan for a technology product model for Introductory Psychology.
More about the Business Plan Development Project.
Editorial: Quantitative Market Research
Gathering user feedback is critical to product development. The extern will conduct a review of Macmillan Learning’s new digital platform, Achieve, and prepare a report of their experiences, highlighting potential benefits for college writers. The extern will attend editorial, media editorial, sales/marketing, and course management meetings, and share their insight on how best to reach student reviewers.
More about the Quantitative Market Research Project.
Engineering: Platform Performance Analysis
A key function of the Site Reliability Team is to provide the key stakeholders within Macmillan Learning with data on the health of the digital learning platforms. This project will be to create performance reporting to help identify opportunities for performance improvement and target development resources where needed.
More about the Platform Performance Analysis Project.
Marketing: Event Planning & Qualitative Market Research
Whether virtual or in person, educational conferences are a key channel for marketing educational solutions. The extern will help coordinate Macmillan Learning’s conference activities at the Society of Teaching Psychology Conference and assist in facilitating two teacher focus groups during the conference.
More about the Event Planning Analysis Project.
Product Development: Developing User Personas
Product development teams create user personas to understand the behaviors, motivations, and challenges of users who interact with their products. The extern will be responsible for drafting a user persona (or personas) for today's college student.
More about the Developing User Personas Project.
Digital Marketing: Web Traffic Analysis and Optimization
Driving traffic to the web is critically important for companies conducting business in the digital world. This project entails conducting an analysis of web traffic, reviewing organic search behavior, and making Search Engine Optimization (SEO) recommendations to increase web traffic using relevant keywords.
More about the Web Traffic Analysis Project.
Editorial: Qualitative Market Research
Gathering customer feedback - what works well and areas of improvement - is essential to product development. This project will provide hands-on experience planning and conducting student focus groups to gather qualitative feedback on user experiences with Achieve, Macmillan’s online learning platform, that will inform future product development and positioning.
More about the Qualitative Market Research Project.
Engineering: Capacity Forecast Modeling
Capacity forecast modeling is essential in helping businesses grow and scale, while minimizing extraneous expenses. This project provides hands-on experience in timely evaluation of the model for real-time improvement in preparation for upcoming peak load season and identification of areas of improvement for forecast modeling for Spring 2022.
More about the Capacity Forecast Modeling Project.
Human Resources: Resource Center Webpage Design
Hiring the best talent is an important part of company operations. This project will support our recruiting efforts by creating an online recruiting resource center using the Lumapps application. This webpage design project will include creating and organizing important recruiting and onboarding documents for employees.
More about the Resource Center Design Project.
Marketing: Market Research and Social Media Campaign Planning
Keeping users engaged online is vital to a company’s growth, reputation, and success. Learn how to craft and share stories that motivate and engage target audiences by conducting student interviews then using the insights to plan, draft, and deploy social media posts (using a popular social media management app).
More about the Market Research and Social Media Planning Project.
Important Dates
Externships engagements are offered during a three week session in October 2021. Other key dates are below.
Application Period
June 30 - August 30
Selection Announcement
No later than Friday, September 10
Externship Engagement
Onboarding: September 13 - October 1
Program Duration: October 4 - 22