Academic Opportunities
Several courses and practicums provide valuable internship experiences or fieldwork experience. Academic practicums offering four units of credit provide faculty mentorship and allow students to thoroughly integrate applied learning in organizations of interest within the context of a given course. For example, the Urban and environmental policy department offers a course on “Community Organizing” that includes an internship requirement with a community-based organization working on a key community objective. The politics department offers a course providing internships and linkages with public interest law firms; Psychology offers fieldwork for psychology and social services-bound students, and several departments have come together to create a Public Health cluster with courses that include internships with places like health clinics and with such partners as promotoras (community health workers). These academic/course based opportunities, in turn, can lead to summer internships as well as continuing ties (and even future employment) with the partner community groups and organizations.