This summer, Yale students will have the chance to receive $4,000 of funding towards unpaid internships at nonprofit organizations, NGOs and government agencies, as well as art apprenticeships in the U.S.
The Domestic Summer Award, which Yale College Dean Marvin Chun announced in an email Thursday morning, will be available to first years, sophomores and juniors who receive financial aid and have secured unpaid positions in one of the four eligible areas. Some underfunded internships might also be considered, according to Office of Career Strategy website. Internships must be at least eight-and-a-half work weeks in duration.
The award will complement the International Summer Award, which pays for eligible summer experiences abroad for students on financial aid. Students will be able to receive both the ISA and the DSA during their time at Yale, but not for the same summer. The new award will cover both third-party internships and eligible Yale-coordinated internships, according to Office of Career Strategy Director Jeanine Dames.
“Yale College seeks to prepare students to make positive and lasting impacts in every community in which they will engage throughout their lives,” Chun wrote in his Thursday email. “By creating the new award, Yale will enable more students to gain direct experience with organizations and individuals whose work is focused on the common good.”
Students who wish to receive the award will have to submit a proposal, which members of OCS’s Common Good & Creative Careers team will then review. Students will have to secure internships before they apply for the award.
Robyn Acampora, director of Strategic Initiatives and Public Service Careers at OCS, said that the proposal will ask students to submit information about the organization they will be working at, a detailed job description, a verification letter from their employer and information concerning both the number of hours they will work each week and the number of weeks they will spend at the job. Students will also have to answer a couple prompts to explain how the experience aligns with their future goals.
Derek Webster, associate director for the arts at the OCS, said he is excited about what the new program can provide to students who hope to pursue careers in industries that do not generally have high-paying undergraduate internships.
“The Common Good & Creative Careers related industries accounted for over 40 percent of student employment last summer,” Webster said. “Factor in Dean Chun’s emphasis of Yale College’s mission to prepare students to make positive and lasting impacts in their communities, as well as understanding that a large proportion of the Common Good & Creative Careers industries offer unpaid and underfunded opportunities, and the DSA can be seen as an amazing fit for an identified need of high student interest in alignment with one of Yale’s core missions.”
Unlike the ISA, which is determined on a sliding scale based on the percentage of financial aid a student receives, the DSA award is fixed at $4,000 for all recipients, Dames told the News. The Office of Career Strategy determined the amount by looking at other funded internship opportunities OCS offers in the U.S., such as the Bulldogs Across America Program and the Women in Government Fellowship, Dames added. The average award for those programs is $4,000.
Funding may be fixed, but there will be no cap on the number of grants available each year, she said.
The creation of the award was prompted by student input put together by OCS and the Yale College Council.
YCC President Matt Guido ’19 said that, a few years ago, YCC established a Working Group on Financial Aid that consists of undergraduates who meet regularly with dean of admissions and undergraduate financial aid Jeremiah Quinlan and University Director of Financial Aid Caesar Storlazzi to discuss financial aid policy for undergraduates. Last year’s working group played a central role in advocating for the new award, Guido said; together with Quinlan and Storlazzi, they brainstormed ideas for the award and collected data from students. This semester, Guido added, YCC made follow-up advocacy and further data collection for the award its top priority.
“The YCC is thrilled about the new Domestic Summer Award program and is very happy to have been a part of making it a reality,” he said.
The application for the DSA will be available on Dec. 1, 2017.
Anastasiia Posnova | anstasiia.posnova@yale.edu