Learning citizenship by doing: Evaluating the effects of a required political campaign internship in American Government.

After years of teaching American National Government as a standard lecture course, I added a campaign internship component. In this article I will discuss course design and implementation (resources and logistics involved in including an internship component) as well as course outcomes (what students learned about campaigns and the effect of the internship experience on the students). I found that getting students engaged in the political process had far-reaching effects beyond what would have been possible in the traditional political science classroom.