Internship opportunities get students into the field, developing new skills and learning how to connect academics to potential careers. The Department of Geography offers the opportunity to undertake internships off-campus in a variety of fields to prepare students for exciting career opportunities in social services, resource conservation, mapping and more.
To undertake an internship, students, often in consultation with a faculty mentor*, identify a sponsoring organization and supervisor within that organization. The student, supervisor, and faculty mentor agree to a program of work and complete the department’s internship agreement form (Word). Students are expected to complete 40 hours of work over the semester for each academic credit earned (typical 3-credit internships are 120 hours over the 15 week semester or summer period). Internships completed during the academic year can earn credit as Geog 191: Internship. The College of Arts & Sciences also offers the option to complete summer internships and earn credit as AS 190B. Considering one of these internship options? Speak to your advisor and check out the excellent internship resources for all students in the College of Arts & Sciences.
Previous Geography students have interned at Northern Cartographic, Population Media Center, US Senate offices, Burlington Housing Authority, Vermont Public Radio, The Nature Conservancy, the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, and National Weather Service, to name a few.
This summer, upcoming senior Gillian Tiley's internship honed her two interests, GIS and French. She spent the summer working for FM Global, a Rhode Island-based insurance company that uses GIS to advise and protect their clients against environmental damage like floods and fires. Tiley was able to take this unpaid internship in part due to her receiving the prestigious Glass Scholarship through the department, which subsidized her internship experience. Tiley wasn't simply delivering coffee orders, but rather, helped compile a global flood map that combines spatial and quantitative data to show hazardous zones and help organizations like hospitals and schools assess potential risks. Tiley used her French skills to focus on building the Quebec region of the flood map, noting that it's "really cool to think about how what I have been doing on a computer screen in Johnston, RI might actually help people be prepared to combat future damage."