This summer, Community-Based Learning, an Office of Experiential and Engaged Learning program within the Office of Undergraduate Education, is collaborating with the Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education (SCoRE) to support 11 interns at nonprofits across the country and around Atlanta. These 11 interns receive funding for their internship through the Ethelyn and Albert Daniel Endowment, a fund dedicated to providing experiential learning opportunities based at non-profit organizations.
The Daniel Endowment recipients join 29 other students participating in SCoRE’s Sustainable Communities Summer Internship program, a program providing students real-world experiences related to sustainability and community engagement. Interns work part-time (15-20 hours per week) or full-time (30-40 hours per week) from mid-May to mid-August.
In addition to the internship experience, students participate in a weekly seminar that includes networking with other interns, an introduction to grassroots sustainability innovation, and multiple opportunities to connect their internship experiences to personal, professional, and academic goals. The seminar also includes site visits, every other Wednesday, to various Atlanta-area community based organizations throughout the summer experience. On alternating Wednesdays, interns meet for online professional development and small-group community building – during which they collaboratively write group journal entries sharing their learnings and reflections on site visits and on their internship experiences broadly.
When asked about her internship experience, Emily Roach, a Biology Major who is interning with Carrie’s Closet, shared, “My internship has definitely allowed me to understand communities that I would like to serve in the healthcare field, that I wouldn’t have been aware of how to serve or be connected to before." Camber Wallace, a Biomedical Engineering intern who is working with Step Ahead Scholars spoke of how her internship has influenced her career planning. She shared, “My internship has taught me a lot about nonprofits, and it has led me to want to go into humanitarian or like nonprofit engineering and work in underprivileged communities.”
The Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education (SCoRE) engages faculty, students, and staff in long-term, strategic research and education collaborations with community partners, focusing on sustainability in the Atlanta region, the state of Georgia, and the Southeast. For more information visit https://scre.research.gatech.edu/.