Internships
One of the most exciting parts of your Middlebury education can be participating in an internship.
Why Internships?
An internship provides an opportunity to explore your career interests and gain experience—you might follow a personal passion, connect to your academic work, work on issues that matter to you, or confirm your interest in a particular career path.
According to a 2024 national survey, employers are seeking candidates who have skills in problem-solving, teamwork, communication, and leadership—and who have completed internships. Completing one or two internships during your time at Middlebury will give you important experience that employers value.
No matter your interests or what you decide to pursue, CCI is here to help you dream big and accomplish your goals.
What is an Internship?
Middlebury defines an internship as an experiential learning opportunity that:
- Provides real-world experience beyond the classroom.
- Immerses you in a learning environment to gain experience and build career-ready skills.
- Includes a high level of supervision, training, and mentoring.
- Typically takes place in winter term and/or summer.
- May be paid or unpaid during the summer.
- May be credit bearing during Winter Term. (Must be unpaid if earning Winter Term credit.)
- May be local, domestic, or international.
Tips for Getting Started
- Apply to internships on Handshake (Your login is your Middlebury email).
- Browse other Handshake Resources, such as:
- Past Internships
- GoinGlobal (includes international and U.S. City Guides)
- USAJobs
- Jopwell
- Idealist
- Check out Middlebury’s summer Cohort Internship Programs such as MiddWorks for Vermont, Privilege and Poverty Internships, and more.
- Also check out CCI-Select internships (summer only) that come with guaranteed funding!
- Visit CCI’s Career Communities for resources, and industry-specific databases and internships.
- Learn about CCI resources and how to start your internship search with a Peer Career Advisor at Quick Questions—no appointment necessary. PCAs can also help you create or edit a résumé and cover letter; first check out our guides, sample résumés, and other great tools and resources.
- Make an appointment to talk with one of our Career Advisors who can give you targeted advice in your field of interest.
- Research industries and organizations that are of interest to you and then build your knowledge base and make connections by networking with over 5000 alumni on Midd2Midd—our database of alumni who have volunteered to offer you career advice and information about their career field or industry. LinkedIn will also offer you opportunities to connect with 48,000 more alums!
- Tell your friends, parents, professors, and everyone you know and meet that you are looking. You never know when a conversation will lead to more information, contacts, or a great tip. Get the scoop on networking.
- Use our Self-Reflection and Career Exploration guides to help you reflect on your skills, interests, and values.
- If your summer internship is unpaid, apply for CCI’s funding for unpaid internships. CCI also has limited funding for Winter Term internships.
Internship Credit
Please note that Middlebury does not typically grant credit for summer internships, except in cases where an organization requires the student to earn credit or a student on an F-1 visa needs to apply for Curricular Practical Training. In these cases, the student may enroll in a fieldwork course through the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. See the Internship Credit link in the left-hand menu on this page.
To earn credit for an unpaid Winter Term internship, you must complete an application to request credit. See the Winter Term Internships link in the left-hand menu on this page.
2025 Opportunities
CCI has three opportunities for Summer 2025:
- CCI-Select Internships
- MiddWorks for Vermont Internships.
- Available funding for internships you find on your own
CCI-Select Internships
Enjoy high-impact, career-building experiences with employers dedicated to mentorship and meaningful learning. These internships span a variety of industries and include a grant from the Center for Careers and Internships (CCI) to support your journey. Check out the latest postings in our Handshake collection. View the CCI_Select opportunities.
MiddWorks for Vermont Summer Internship Program
Live, learn, and work in Vermont while contributing to the state’s economy, arts, education, and environment. Be part of a vibrant cohort living in Burlington or Middlebury, gaining hands-on experience with impactful organizations. go/MiddWorks or head to Handshake to view the MiddWorks opportunities (Application deadline March 2, 2025.)
Internship Videos
Find and Fund Your Summer Internship
(Recorded on 1/14/25)
It is not too early to start planning your summer internship! Check out the recording of our Find and Fund Your Summer Internship Webinar to learn strategies for finding or creating the best summer internship for you. At this session, we:
- Help you focus your search based on interest, geography, and other factors that matter to you.
- Highlight top resources to use in the search process.
- Discuss strategies for applying to posted positions or creating your own experience.
- Give you examples of past internships Midd students have done.
- Provide an overview of CCI’s GRANT FUNDING available for unpaid internships.
Now is the time to start planning your summer internship! Learn strategies for finding or creating the best summer internship for you.
At this session, we:
• Help you focus your search based on interest, geography, and other factors that matter to you.
• Highlight top resources to use in the search process.
• Discuss strategies for applying to posted positions or creating your own experience.
• Give you examples of past internships Midd students have done.
• Provide an overview of CCI’s grant funding available for unpaid internships.
If you couldn’t attend, drop into Quick Questions (go/PCAs) or make an appointment with a CCI advisor for help.
Sponsored by the Center for Careers and Internships.
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Alex LaVin: okay, we’re going to get started now.
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Alex LaVin: Welcome to find and fund your summer internship. This is presented by the Center for careers and internships. I’m Cheryl Whitney Lauer. I’m the associate director for internships and career exploration. I’m also joined by my colleague, Amy Mcglashan, Director of Academic initiatives and special projects. And then Karen White is a senior internship coordinator for Cci, and she was the one out in the lobby helping to sign you in.
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Alex LaVin: Of course it’s not
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Alex LaVin: okay. Here we go, having a little
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Alex LaVin: it problem. So I’d like to start out with what an internship is, or what the Cci definition of that is. So. An internship is an experience where you get to get out in the real world and explore a career interest of yours. You get to gain some experience.
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Alex LaVin: You get to develop skills or apply skills that you have learned here at Middlebury. You get mentored by a supervisor because you’re usually working for an organization. It’s also a chance to establish networks and contacts in a field of your interest.
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Alex LaVin: to delve deeply into issues that you care about. And one of the good things about internships is it’s a low stakes way to find out what you like and what you don’t like. So a lot of times an internship will affirm. Yes, you know I’d love to be in this field. I’d love to work for an organization like this, or it can be. No, this isn’t really for me, but it’s a short-term experience, and then you get to move on and try something new.
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Alex LaVin: So internships at Middlebury can be paid or unpaid, and we’re mostly talking about summer internships here.
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Alex LaVin: Summer internships are generally not for credit, and there are a few exceptions to that that I’m going to talk about later on.
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Alex LaVin: Usually they’re in person, but sometimes they can be remote or a hybrid of the 2, and they can be in any field or interest area.
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Alex LaVin: So I’m just going to show you a series of photos that are from previous Middlebury internships that students have done to give you the sense that internships come in all shapes and sizes. Whatever your interest is, you can find something that will fit what
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Alex LaVin: you know, what fits you. You’re a unique person. You have different experiences. So what your friends do doesn’t really matter. You know, it really matters what you want to do and what’s important to you. So this internship was a marine conservation internship in the Bahamas.
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Alex LaVin: This was a finance internship that took place internationally.
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Alex LaVin: It can be in healthcare or research.
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Alex LaVin: You could be working in a museum or art gallery.
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Alex LaVin: You could be working on Capitol Hill.
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Alex LaVin: This was an archeology internship in France last summer
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Alex LaVin: you could be doing environmental education with kids.
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Alex LaVin: Here’s a pre-health internship, obviously pre-dental.
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Alex LaVin: The students were doing fashion theater design. Internships and other students do fashion internships.
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Alex LaVin: Sometimes students work at, think tanks
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Alex LaVin: or do environmental field work. This was actually, Gis related.
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Alex LaVin: This one was at the Pentagon with an alum.
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Alex LaVin: It can be related to environmental work. This was energy work on wind turbines.
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Alex LaVin: This one was city planning, transportation, urban planning internship.
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Alex LaVin: Amy’s going to talk a little bit more about some of our cohort internships. This was one of our cohorts in South Africa, which is a consulting internship.
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Alex LaVin: and this was another cohort internship here in Vermont, consulting, working with the Opportunities Credit Union. This was one in India art conservation.
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Alex LaVin: This one was an anthropology, biology related internship, doing research on chimps in Uganda.
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Alex LaVin: This one took place in Kenya, working with a nonprofit or Ngo.
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Alex LaVin: The student was pre-vet, so worked at a zoo for the summer.
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Alex LaVin: This one was health related, so the student did a lot of research and was presenting her findings at the end.
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Alex LaVin: Sometimes students want to combine their interest in athletics with something else, either coaching or data analytics something like that.
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Alex LaVin: This student was working at a children’s library emts.
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Alex LaVin: That’s often, we have a few each summer working on that. And then there’s the whole communications field journalism, writing, publishing. The student was working on a podcast.
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Alex LaVin: and then this student was in the film industry. He was doing animation for an independent film. So this was one of my favorite photos.
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Alex LaVin: So I hope that kind of gives you a sense of internships aren’t always in an office or a cubicle. You can be doing just a wide variety of things, and they can be really fun and meaningful, and you can feel like you’re contributing to the organization, but also learning a lot.
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Alex LaVin: So I just wanted to tell you a little bit about remote internships, because obviously those have come up since Covid, and they can be a great experience for some students. But if you’re considering a remote internship I’d really want you to go in with your eyes wide open and think about. Is that really the best practice for you?
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Alex LaVin: Oftentimes you really have to work independently. You have to work really hard to communicate with the other staff members. It’s harder to be mentored. It’s harder to stay motivated so it can work for students who are really
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Alex LaVin: like to be independent set their own schedule. It can give you some flexibility, but they can also be really hard. So I just wanted to say that the last few years, when we’re getting evaluations from students who have done strictly remote internships, a lot of them have admitted it’s really hard. I don’t really want to work remotely.
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Alex LaVin: So I often get this question, who qualifies for an internship, and you all do so 1st year, students through graduating seniors can all do internships. Sometimes a student who is just graduating from Middlebury still wants to do an internship because they’re still exploring, or they want to build some more skills, or they feel like that gets them a foot in the door, you know. So you have lots of opportunities to do internships.
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Alex LaVin: So I’ve broken this into 3 different sections, focus, find and fund. And the focus section that we’re about to talk about is really just kind of self-reflection, and and how you want to do the internship, and why? So the 4? These are the 4 questions, maybe, that you want to pose to yourself.
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Alex LaVin: So the 1st one is this the right summer for you to do an internship? I know. I just want to step back and acknowledge that there’s a lot of pressure to do internships. You might have friends who are in the process already or getting hired, and it’s stressing you out.
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Alex LaVin: So I know there’s a lot of expectations that you gain some experience during Middlebury, and it would be great, you know, typically students get one or 2 internship or research experiences under their belt while they’re here in Middlebury, and I know some of you have come in with experiences already. So if you can kind of think ahead and think about all the windows of opportunity
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Alex LaVin: you have to gain experience. And if you’re a 1st year student and thinking I probably should do an internship this summer. You don’t necessarily have to. If you think about it and think about what are your other opportunities for gaining experience. If you want to go back to your summer job experience, or working in a restaurant, or whatever that is.
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Alex LaVin: and save an internship for another summer. You’ve got the other summers. You’ve got winter terms when you can do an internship for one month and get credit for it. A lot of students do an internship during their study abroad experience. And then there are lots of other ways to gain experience being involved with student organizations, student government, residential life, you know, those are all ways you’re showing
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Alex LaVin: leadership. You’re gaining skills, community service,
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Alex LaVin: student jobs on campus summer jobs that you’ve had before. So those are all ways that you’re kind of building your story and building skills and experience as you go along.
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Alex LaVin: So if you do decide this is the summer for you, you do want to try to get an internship?
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Alex LaVin: One of the focus questions might be, where do you want to be?
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Alex LaVin: Do you want to be at home, or do you want to live somewhere else? Sometimes students say to me, I want to be anywhere but home, or you know I have relatives in San Francisco and Chicago and Portland, Maine. So I could be in any of those places. Okay, so that’s really a good way to kind of focus your search geographically. And then think about, do you want to be in person? Would remote, be okay? Or would a hybrid experience be okay?
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Alex LaVin: So you know, think about okay, are there different places where you could do an internship? Or if you’re limited to one place like you want to be at home in St. Louis or wherever you live, then that’s great, you know. Then you focus your search that way
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Alex LaVin: and then think about the broad areas that you’re interested in and skills you have or and or impacts that you’d like to make either this summer or in the future. So just to give a couple examples, these are ways that you can kind of focus your your search or your thinking about the internship.
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Alex LaVin: So if you know, if you’re thinking about, what are you? What are you interested in. You might say, I’m a psychology major. And I love interacting with kids. So how could I combine those 2 together into an internship? And maybe that would look like
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Alex LaVin: doing tutoring with kids. Or it could look like
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Alex LaVin: working for an organization that works with children who are on the spectrum, you know. So whatever that is, you could think about, how do you combine those together? Or you could think about it from the skills perspective.
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Alex LaVin: I’m a great writer, and I would love any kind of internship where I’m using my writing skills. It could be in communications publishing journalism. You know. You could do it that way, or I’m good with numbers. Or I have Gis skills, you know. Think about that.
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Alex LaVin: Or you could think about what’s the impact you want to make either in the future or this summer. So if you’re really interested in legal issues related to immigration, maybe you want to get experience sometime, either this summer or another summer, or you could just approach it like, I don’t really care what I do. I want to do something meaningful with my summer. I want to work for a nonprofit and or a political campaign.
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Alex LaVin: So if you need help on focusing your interests, Cci has a self-reflection guide which has a series of questions. That would be a great thing for you to do. So that’s on the Cci website. You can make an appointment with a Cci advisor, or you can talk to alums and other students to help you.
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Alex LaVin: you know, sort of navigate that part.
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Alex LaVin: and then you want to do your research and and make sure that it’s a good fit for you. So then you look at industry, internship types, and different organizations, and you can use handshake filters which I’ll show you later, which is really searching, based on career industry areas. And then you can research what alums and peers have done who have similar interests to yours.
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Alex LaVin: and you know we have different platforms that we’d suggest either mid to Mid Linkedin. We have a list of past internships that Middlesbury students have done. That’s a resource to you, and you know, think about talking to other students in student organizations.
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Alex LaVin: And then, before we start talking about strategies for finding an internship. The next step for all of you, I would say, is to make sure that your resume is up to speed, and the best it can be before you find the internships, and before you start applying to them. So these are Cci’s peer career advisor. They’re highly trained. They’re excellent. They can work with you on your resumes and your cover letters. They have drop-in hours called quick questions.
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Alex LaVin: and their go link is go slash Pcas, and that’ll give you their schedule and their locations on campus.
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Alex LaVin: Okay? So finding an internship. And this is where we’re turning.
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Alex LaVin: So I like to think about 3 different strategies for finding an internship sort of broadly defined one that you apply to posted internships and databases that could be handshake, and I’ll also show you some other databases, or where you can find more targeted ones.
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Alex LaVin: Number 2 would be that you find an organization you want to work for, you research their website, and you apply directly. So let’s say you would love to work for the Nature Conservancy, or you would love to work in publishing. So in that case you can just go to the Nature Conservancy website research. If they have internships or positions available, you apply directly on their website
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Alex LaVin: same thing with publishing houses, you know. Maybe you have to do a little bit of research and find out. Oh, there’s Simon and Schuster, and there’s Random House, and these are the places I want to look on the websites and look and see if I can apply directly.
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Alex LaVin: and then the 3rd strategy would be creating your own by networking and contacting the organization directly. This would be examples. Maybe there’s a startup that you’ve heard about.
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Alex LaVin: or there’s a small nonprofit in your hometown. Maybe they don’t advertise for internships, so they’ve never had one. But you can reach out to them directly, and just say, I’m a Middlebury student. I want to gain experience this summer. I would love to, you know, work for you. I really admire your mission. Are there projects that I could do for you? And then that will also benefit me because I’m gaining experience along the way.
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Alex LaVin: So we have lots of information on our website at go slash internships.
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Alex LaVin: And then these are some of our top tips for finding an internship, so a couple of them I’ve already covered. But you know, one obvious one is to make an appointment with a Cci advisor and say, I need some help. These are my interests, you know. Can you help me find an internship? Or how do I go about finding one.
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Alex LaVin: You apply to internships on handshake. We’ll go over some searches. In a little while.
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Alex LaVin: I would say about 85% of the internships that you find on handshake are paid, and then the others are unpaid. They’re great unpaid internships. So that’s fine, too, and you can apply for Cci funding, and that’ll be in the next section that I talk about that.
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Alex LaVin: and on handshake you can look for Cci. Select and cohort internships, and Amy’s going to talk about that in a little while those come with guaranteed funding.
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Alex LaVin: As I mentioned, we have a section in handshake called the Resource section, and one of those resources is a list of past internships. That’s a great resource.
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Alex LaVin: We also have the career community pages that I’ll show you at the end.
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Alex LaVin: And then we have these weekly newsletters that come out in each industry area or each career path area
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Alex LaVin: put out by the advisor at Cci. So there’s a consulting business and finance Newsletter, and there’s a social impact one, and there’s 1 for media and communications and the arts.
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Alex LaVin: So networking is a great way to find internships. I talked a little bit about that, and you all have a network that you can tap into, because there are 7,000 alumni and parents on mid to mid mid connect is the section where you reach out to them. It’s kind of like a Middlebury version of Linkedin. And then there’s the regular Linkedin, which has about 48,000 alums on there.
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Alex LaVin: You can also tell all your friends and family and anyone you meet, you know, just as you are having conversations with people. Tell them what you’re interested in, what your major is, what you want to do during the summer. So if you’re at a family wedding, you know, and you’re just chit chatting with people, you know. You never know when there might be some sort of tip that comes up, or some
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Alex LaVin: lead that you get. So I like to tell the story about a student from a couple years ago, who was visiting her grandmother in her retirement home and met the grandmother’s friend, who asked her, what was she majoring in? What was she interested in? So she said, I’m a neuroscience, Major. I’m really interested in genetics. I am looking for a summer internship.
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Alex LaVin: and the grandmother’s friend said, well, it’s your lucky day, because my son is the head of a genetics lab in Boston, and here’s his number, and I’m telling him that you’re going to call him. And she got that internship
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Alex LaVin: that’s networking, even though you would think. That’s not what you would think networking is.
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Alex LaVin: We already talked about identifying an organization and reaching out to them directly, and then, as I’ve mentioned a couple times. The resource section of handshake has a lot of different targeted databases that you can look at, such as usajobs.gov for government-related jobs going global for international idealist.org is a lot of social impact.
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Alex LaVin: Jobwell is a great resource for organizations that are looking for diverse candidates.
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Alex LaVin: So there’s lots of good options there
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Alex LaVin: and then do your homework, and make sure the internship or the organization is a good fit for you, either before you apply for the internship, or if you get to the point where they’re contacting you and want to have an interview, so you can ask alums for advice again. Use mid to mid or Linkedin.
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Alex LaVin: You can look at handshake reviews, ask other students on handshake a lot of times when you look at a job description, there might be a list in that job description of other students who have worked there, and you can reach out to them directly. It doesn’t have to be Middlebury students, because lots of other schools use handshake.
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Alex LaVin: You can look at that list of past internships and ask those students, Was this a great place to work. What did you think about the Supervisor?
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Alex LaVin: Glassdoor is a place where you can look at reviews for organizations.
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Alex LaVin: If you’re in the situation where you’re being interviewed for a position, you can kind of flip it around in your mind and say, I’m also interviewing this person. They don’t know that. But I’m getting a sense whether this person would be a good supervisor for me, and whether I feel like this, culture would be a good fit for me.
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Alex LaVin: and then every job description has an application due date. But you should really plan to apply to those positions early, because sometimes they fill them on a rolling basis. So if you wait till the deadline date, you might miss out on even being able to apply.
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Alex LaVin: and then just a little word about conducting your search in an ethical manner. So what I mean about this is, if you’ve applied to a number of internships
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Alex LaVin: and you get an offer and accept that offer. But then you keep looking because you think well, maybe this other internship that I applied to I’d like even more. So I’m just going to tell this 1st employer that I’m going to work for them. But if I get another better offer I’m going to, then renege on that offer, so you can’t do that. That’s unethical. So if you’re going to commit to an organization and tell them that you’re working for them, you need to fulfill that obligation.
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Alex LaVin: Cci advisors can help you if you get the offer 1st from the organization that you don’t really want, you know, how can you leverage that offer and contact another organization and say, I got an offer. But I was really hoping to, you know. See if I’m a you know, a good candidate for this position, or whether you would be telling about the hiring decision soon. So we can help with all that.
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Alex LaVin: Okay, Amy’s. I’m going to trade places with Amy, and she’s going to talk a little bit more about other sources for getting help on your internship search, and she’s going to talk about cohorts. And Cci select.
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Alex LaVin: Hello!
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Alex LaVin: How many of you have had an internship before, just out of curiosity?
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Alex LaVin: Okay, so almost half. And how many of you have used some of the resources that Cheryl just went over to find it.
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Alex LaVin: Not as many. Okay. So that means there are that many more ways to find an internship than the ones that we just showed you. So you should talk to the other students as well.
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Alex LaVin: Okay. So, coming back to the peer career advisors, they really are our front face. They’ve got great hours. If you go to the website or go to Gopcas, they’ve got hours, not just in our office, but in the Q center, the Anderson Freeman center, maybe the sushi cafe all over, in other words, and in the evening hours, too, not just in the afternoons.
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Alex LaVin: and tomorrow from 5 to 6 30. They’re having more. It’s like, it’s hands-on help. So it’s basically a drop-in session where they’re going to be more than one on hand in Johnson, so you can pop in before or after dinner, and just get a little bit of help if you have some questions about the search or want to start
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Alex LaVin: pursuing some of the ideas that Cheryl just threw at you. This is a great opportunity to show up
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Alex LaVin: just really quickly. And this is really also, if you want to take a I know a lot of students like to take photos of this. So you know who the particular advisors are. This is all on the website, too, by the way, but these are the different advisors we have, and you can sign up in handshake or use handshake to sign up for an appointment with any of them.
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Alex LaVin: You don’t have to see a Pca. First.st If you are clear about the area you want to pursue and feel like an advisor is really the person you want to meet with first.st
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Alex LaVin: So, Alicia, for arts and entertainment, Tracy for social impact, education, international development. You can see the list, Tim, for government and law, Matt business and finance, Jeff for technology, Mary and Hannah over in Ctlr. For health professions in stem.
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Alex LaVin: and me specifically for the cohorts which we’ll talk about, and then Cheryl for general advising
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Alex LaVin: so. And we’re going to get a little bit more into this when we talk about funding. But, as Cheryl mentioned, in addition to those internships that are paid.
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Alex LaVin: we have a pool of funding that she’ll be talking about that you can apply to if you get an unpaid internship. But within that we basically set aside some of that funding and designate it to already existing internships, because, for several reasons, a. Because we think they have value, they might be with an alumni or a parent, and we know that
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Alex LaVin: they’re a high quality opportunity, and with a Middlebury connection, or that they might be organized around a theme. So 1st for Cci select, there is a label for that. We also have created what we call a collection which we will show you. So in handshake you’ll see where we might have created collections, and Cci select is one of them. So these are internships.
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Alex LaVin: not in Vermont, because Cci, select in Vermont, will be midworks for Vermont, but they are pre-funded, or internships that come with funding all over the country and across all kinds of industries and fields that are unpaid, so generally not financed because those are paid. But in those fields that are generally unpaid.
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Alex LaVin: Well, I’m trying to think a few examples of some Cci select elsewhere. I know off the top of my head. There are 2 in South Africa related to museums, for example, and the Norval Foundation. That’s a Cci select.
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Alex LaVin: or with a nature conservancy, as a matter of fact. So if you like that, and you can do a search for them. And the list is small right now, but growing
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Alex LaVin: within, not within Cci select, but I think they will be labeled the same right? So the cohorts are going to show up in C. We just had this conversation today, and I’m sorry. I’m already getting confused cohort internships. Anyone heard of stiive or midworks, or some of those other ones? Okay, so those are
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Alex LaVin: internships that are organized around a theme. So midworks for Vermont are internships here in Vermont that are really about getting students to think about staying in Vermont and enjoying Vermont, and maybe coming back to Vermont to live. But they are across all kinds of issue areas from the arts to promoting economic development, to working on health care policy to the game
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Alex LaVin: working for our local Addison independent working for 7 days, the Statewide publication working for the filmmakers festival. So they are literally across the gamut. But they are here in Vermont. We have other cohorts
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Alex LaVin: organized around so that might be organized around geography. We have another one. Cheryl referred to the Vermont business strategy and consulting program. That is a little Mini consulting firm, if you will, here in Vermont, working for some nonprofit organizations here, there’s 1 in Minneapolis with the Minneapolis Institute of Art
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Alex LaVin: working on curation and preservation and museum studies. Basically, that’s a small cohort new this year. So there are a few. They won’t have a collection. But you could search by cohort. And we also have a cohort page on our website, Biblioteca. David Kitson is teaching English
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Alex LaVin: for residents, citizens in Costa, Rica, Nosara, Costa Rica. That’s a community that’s made up. There are a lot of expats there. So it’s to local citizens benefit to learn English to be able to work in the hospitality and service industries.
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Alex LaVin: Vermont innovation. Summer is not one that we run, but our partners over at the innovation hub working with also here in Vermont, but working more with startups or those on the edge of innovation. Kind of work.
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Alex LaVin: What am I missing? There may be a few others that I’m not thinking of. Off the top of my head dive is in South Africa doing, consulting that deadline is already passed, because that is such a competitive and popular program. But you could certainly excuse me, certainly look at it and go to their website. And if you wanted funding. You could begin to talk with them about
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Alex LaVin: getting funded next year. But just know next fall that that application, handshake application is usually, like
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Alex LaVin: September 15th or October 1st to December 15, th because it’s so competitive, we fund 15 students, and that’s not even enough. But that’s obviously all we can fund.
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Alex LaVin: And then, in addition to Cci, select and cohort internships, there’s a broader group that you’ll see called reserved for mid. So that’s an array that’s all over the country, and includes these, but might be others where they might not come with funding, but where they have a special Middlebury connection, because, again, there might be a parent.
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Alex LaVin: an alumni who helped set it up, and who we have a special relationship with. And this is specifically so. You’d only be competing with other Middlebury students for any of these. You’re only competing with Middlebury students.
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Alex LaVin: Okay, that’s why we want you to know about them. Basically, here’s the other thing about these. I’ll say how many of you are 1st years?
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Alex LaVin: Oh, yeah, how many of you are second year. So, sophomores. So here’s a secret. When Cheryl gets to talk about funding
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Alex LaVin: if you’re if this does not count towards one of your or as your grant that you are entitled, every student is allowed to apply for one cycle of a Cci Grant. These don’t count. You get one of these. You still get to apply for one of the grants next year. So for particularly for 1st years and sophomores. It’s highly beneficial to know
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Alex LaVin: secret. I like to make sure you know about
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Alex LaVin: very quickly, just to talk about credit, as Cheryl said, it is not general practice or policy for Middlebury College to award credit for summer internships.
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Alex LaVin: that the time for those, if you want credit, is for winter. There are exceptions to that, and that is, if you’re an international student who’s working for a Us-based organization, then you have to do it for credit. That’s a visa requirement, and you need to make sure that you’re eligible for Cpt. But then there’s a course that we run in collaboration with Monterey.
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Alex LaVin: That Tracy Himelishem, in our office actually teaches is this instructor for but that you would need to enroll in? There are some of you sometimes where you get an internship where the internship, the organization requires that you do it for credit, and that’s their own legal way of making sure that they don’t have to pay you. And so in that case you would also enroll in that
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Alex LaVin: course. But those are really the only 2 occasions where you would be doing an internship for credit for the summer.
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Alex LaVin: and, as it says, the credit does not count toward graduation. It’s really just fulfilling that requirement for your internship and for international students. It has to be related to your area of study, because that’s how you qualify for the curricular practical training.
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Alex LaVin: And any any of our well.
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Alex LaVin: if you really have a question about that, international students should go talk to iss first.st Isss about the details around that. But but we can answer some of the more general questions about how you enroll for the course and and that kind of thing.
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Alex LaVin: All right, turning it back over to Cheryl.
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Alex LaVin: All right. So this is a section on the Cci funding that we provide on a competitive basis. So our information is at go slash summerfunding.
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Alex LaVin: and that page will be fully updated in February. We have a lot of information from last year, and basically all the paperwork is going to be the same. But we just have to update with dates and new paperwork.
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Alex LaVin: So here are the 3 kinds of grants that we offer competitively. There’s the $4,000, summer internship funding Grant for unpaid internships.
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Alex LaVin: Yeah, I mean, there’s a chance that might go up. But right now we have to say it’s $4,000, and if it goes up $500, that’ll be a nice surprise for everybody. But right now you should only plan on $4,000, and that is for sophomore febs and up to super seniors.
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Alex LaVin: and then 1st year students or sophomore febs are eligible for the 1st year explore Grant, and then we have $1,000 arts, grants. And that’s for a short-term arts. Related experience.
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Alex LaVin: And here’s our timeline. February is when the funding applications will go live. We’ll send out emails about that. April 4th is the funding application deadline.
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Alex LaVin: That’s when you have to apply for the funding. Once you have your internship may second, we will send notifications out about whether you got the funding or not, and then the money. If you’re getting that award, the money will go into your account by early to mid-june, so we always hope it’s by the 1st of June, but sometimes it’s not so. You should plan your internship. Start date accordingly.
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Alex LaVin: and here’s who’s eligible for funding. You have to be in good academic and judicial standing. You can’t be a graduating senior or planning to transfer, or you can’t be on leave for the spring or the fall of 2025.
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Alex LaVin: If you’re studying abroad. That’s fine, because that’s authorized.
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Alex LaVin: You can’t have already received a $4,000, grant from Cci through the competitive process, and you must be willing to complete all the required reflections, funding paperwork and respond to emails. And that’s a key point, because Karen has to track all the paperwork and try to make her life easier.
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Alex LaVin: So to apply for competitive funding. You must have been offered the internship and accepted it. So you have to commit to it. And then that’s that April 4th deadline where you’ll apply.
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Alex LaVin: Explore grants for 1st year. Students have to be at least 4 weeks long and 25 HA week.
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Alex LaVin: The other internships, the regular internships for the $4,000 grant, have to be at least 8 weeks long and 30 HA week.
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Alex LaVin: You can make a longer internship and fewer hours per week as long as it totals up to 240, but your internship can’t be less than 8 weeks long, and it has to be one experience. You can’t have 2 20 h per week internships together, so it has to be one at least 30 h experience.
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Alex LaVin: So you apply for funding by the April 4th deadline, and before you apply for funding, you have to have your resume approved by a peer career advisor. So we’ve put that slide up a couple times
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Alex LaVin: that you should do that. Now, that’s a great thing to do during winter term, and you have to write a 500 word essay. So the prompt is up on the website again, you know, that will all be updated soon.
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Alex LaVin: and then you’re going to apply on this platform called Middlebury apply or mid apply.
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Alex LaVin: And it looks like that. It’s not active yet, but it will be.
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Alex LaVin: And then just a word about international internships like either international students who are going home to do an internship or a domestic student who wants to do an internship internationally. There are a couple other steps. It has to be your internship. If it’s going to be funded has to be reviewed by Middlebury’s Global Operations Committee. There’s a little bit of extra paperwork.
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Alex LaVin: and then you’ll also have to register your travel once, you know, you know what your flights are and what your dates are. So those are 2 extra steps.
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Alex LaVin: and then just about what we don’t fund. So we don’t fund classes and trainings or experiences that you have to pay for, and exceptions are the those arts. Grants can be used for dance festivals or dance trainings. If you’re a dance student.
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Alex LaVin: we don’t fund research with Middlebury faculty members because there’s another pot of money on campus that funds those. So Cci does not fund those. But we do fund undergraduate research positions with non-middlebury faculty. So at another university or college, we don’t fund self-directed projects.
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Alex LaVin: we don’t fund internships that you know you have a direct relative. It’s your supervisor. It can’t be your mother or your father, or your aunt or your uncle.
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Alex LaVin: and we don’t fund paid positions unless it’s very low paid like you’re getting less than $4,000 for the summer. Sometimes there are organizations that’ll give you a $2,000 stipend for the whole summer, and in that case you can apply for the $4,000, Grant, and tell us what you’re getting paid, we would subtract that amount
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Alex LaVin: and bump you up to the equivalent of what everyone else is getting. So if you’re getting $2,000 from your employer, we’d give you another $2,000,
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Alex LaVin: and in most cases there are other places you can apply for funding on campus. But we all communicate and collaborate with each other. So in most cases you’re only going to get funded by one office. But you know, we’ll decide like, Okay, we’ll fund this student, and you can fund that one.
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Alex LaVin: And then I’m going to close before I get to the hands-on part and show you about handshake. Just examples of ways. Middlebury students have found internships
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Alex LaVin: so on handshake a notice or communication from their professor on idealist.org or U.S.A. jobs, which is one of those targeted databases I told you about emails that Cci sends out, or the student had visited a museum before, thought it would be a great place to work reached out to the museum and was given an internship.
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Alex LaVin: The student talks about networking efforts with alums on Linkedin and Mid to mid. The student was interested in
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Alex LaVin: undergraduate research like scientific research. And Google searched researchers. You know, you might look at universities that are in your home city, or if you have a particular scientific interest. And you want to do some research. You know you look at who are some professors around, you know, who are doing research that I’m interested in, and I’m going to reach out to them directly and see if they would take me on.
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Alex LaVin: And then this last student found out about breakthrough collaborative while searching for summer internships.
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Alex LaVin: again searching on Google and Linkedin, and then talking to Middlebury grads, who also interned at that organization a referral from a fellow student who did the internship the previous summer.
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Alex LaVin: This one, I, like a student, had read a paper in class and reached out to the author of that paper to see if they had any opportunities for them for the summer, sent them their resume and some references, and had an interview, and got that internship.
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Alex LaVin: Or you know, you all probably listen to podcasts. And there are some interesting organizations that you hear about. You can reach out to. You know that organization that you’ve heard about.
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Alex LaVin: The student was reading a magazine in a store, said, Wow, this is really interesting. It was all about cooking and foods, and reached out to the publisher. Got that internship
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Alex LaVin: researching environmental internships, if that’s what you’re interested in. And then finding internships in a Cci newsletter.
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Alex LaVin: Okay, so that’s the end of this presentation. Yeah.
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Alex LaVin: I mean, obviously, there’s a theme to a lot of those methods and excuse me. Well, if you think about it from the employer’s perspective, an undergraduate just reaching out to them out of the blue. I mean. Talk about how to make a good 1st impression when you don’t even know them. That doesn’t happen very often. And so you’re already showing initiative. You’re showing leadership. You’re showing curiosity. So you’re
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Alex LaVin: already starting the process from a really good place. So how many of those people who said they found their internships in those other ways? How many of them found them kind of like doing that like just doing your own research.
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Alex LaVin: not many, a few a few. Anyway. If we had more time we would solicit some of the pardon me, I’m going to stop talking. Okay, anyway, I just wanted to underscore that.
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Alex LaVin: Okay, I’m just going to switch to handshake for a minute.
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Alex LaVin: Okay, so this is what your handshake page looks like when you 1st sign on. So if you go over to the top right hand corner, there’s a little circle with your initials in it, and if you go there and go down to my career interests, there’s a series of questions that you should all make sure that you answer, because then handshake knows what your preferences are, and can send you notices about different internships.
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Alex LaVin: and by doing this there’s 1 section here where you can sign up for those newsletters that I talked about this section right here. So if you wanted to be on the arts, Media and Communications Newsletter, you would check that one. If you wanted to get finance consulting and business, and you wanted to get social impact, you just check all those and then click this green save button down below, and then be sure you answer the
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Alex LaVin: 2 sections here, too. So that just makes it more complete.
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Alex LaVin: Okay, so now I’m going to go and just do a sample internship search for you. So you go to the jobs Tab, and then up here on those bubbles along the top, you click on internship, and then that opens this, all filters, purple bubble. And what I would do is go to the industry section
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Alex LaVin: right here and then there is this down arrow, and you can just scroll through this list and click off anything that’s interesting to you. So I’m going to do natural resources
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Alex LaVin: and see what else whoops neutral resources. Let’s say international affairs.
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Alex LaVin: And I’ll do one more
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Alex LaVin: oops.
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Alex LaVin: Government, local state. Okay? Then I’m going to show results. And then let’s say I’ve got some locations. So I’m going to say that I could be in Boston
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Alex LaVin: or Washington, DC,
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Alex LaVin: okay, and then show results. And so that’s giving me 60 jobs. So if I didn’t put in the locations, there would be a higher number. But you know, this is a way to really focus on
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Alex LaVin: what you’re interested in and the location. And then you can go through that list and click on different ones that you think would be interesting. So here’s
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Alex LaVin: maybe I want to look at this environmental justice internship at the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
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Alex LaVin: Okay? And then, if I want to try one other little search. I’m going to clear that
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Alex LaVin: I’m going to put it back on internships.
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Alex LaVin: and then I can do. I could also do by job function, so that would be. Let’s say I want something legal related.
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Alex LaVin: So here’s paralegals and legal assistants.
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Alex LaVin: Let’s say I’m interested in journalism or writing journalism. So you just kind of have to put in different things that you can think about.
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Alex LaVin: and then show results that gave me 92 that way. So those are just 2 different ways of doing searches, and then I’m going to bring Amy up again, and she’s going to show you how to do the collections and the cohorts, and then I’ll come back and just finish up with the resources.
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Alex LaVin: and so to distinguish between the filters that she just showed you and collections. So collections are what we’ve curated in our office in ways that we think it would be in areas that we think would be of interest. And to make it easier for you to find. So where are we going back? Yeah.
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Alex LaVin: oops, it’s not social.
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Alex LaVin: There we go.
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Alex LaVin: Why isn’t it
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Alex LaVin: so hard to do this looking on the screen. Well, and you can do it. Let me just show you I should stop looking at that, and it’s a lot easier to look at this. So just so, you know, you can go to. You can find the collections right there.
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Alex LaVin: So these aren’t all of them. But these. So this is one where you don’t have to like search. I mean, you are searching in handshake, but that’s the whole design, which is the right there on your dashboard. So, for example, here’s midworks. So that’s that subset of Cci select that are based here in Vermont.
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Alex LaVin: And right now there’s only 10 listed. But I can tell you there’s going to be about 50, we hope, by the end of January.
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Alex LaVin: But so the Shelburne Museum, in their conservation, Shelburne farms working in environmental education. There’ll be some, I know, for the Green Mountain Care Board. There’ll be some for Vermont future project which is working on economic development. So these are just the Chamber of Commerce. So those are just the ones that are posted already. Let me see if it goes back there. No.
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Alex LaVin: sorry. I don’t know why I’m so.
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Alex LaVin: but we have another. Is the reserve for mid visible yet. No, not yet. So there will be the one that says reserve for mid. It’s not live yet.
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Alex LaVin: Yep.
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Alex LaVin: So here are again all of the ones that come with cci funding. So it’ll include the midworks. It’ll include some of those other cohorts, but it also includes some of the other ones I mentioned. Like the curatorial internship in South Africa, in Cape Town.
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Alex LaVin: with the Norvall Foundation, or can we go back? Nope.
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Alex LaVin: I’m just curious. There we go, or
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Alex LaVin: what are the others? Oh, the Minneapolis one I mentioned, and that oh, and they’re working with no, that’s a midworks, too, because that’s Emt. So that’s all that’s in there at the moment. But there again, there will be a lot more. How many did we end up with for Cci select?
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Alex LaVin: Yeah. So again, by the end of January, there’s probably going to be close to a hundred internships in there all over the country, not just in Vermont. So
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Alex LaVin: And another collection as I mentioned that you’ll be wanting to see, and it’s just not visible to you yet as the reserve for mid. But there’s also. So some of our advisors are creating collections so renewable energy technology. These might not be just internships, though. But this is where you can look for collections. Does that make sense?
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Alex LaVin: And we’re creating new ones all the time? So.
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Alex LaVin: in fact, if you have a suggestion for one, let us know.
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Alex LaVin: Okay, thank you. So I’m just going to finish up by showing you how to make an appointment. So career center appointments.
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Alex LaVin: Then you schedule a new appointment.
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Alex LaVin: Click here and then let’s say you want one on arts and Architecture communications or marketing. You click there and then the available slots show up with that advisor, and then you just click on that whatever one you want.
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Alex LaVin: and you can do that with any of those categories. If you’ll see the health professions and science advising those advisors, even though it’s showing up there. The small print says to email them directly. They’re not on handshake, so you can’t make an appointment with them on handshake. They work at Ctlr. Mary Lothrop and Hannah Benz. So for them. You just contact them directly by email.
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Alex LaVin: And then the last thing I’m going to show you is that resources section that I’ve referred to a couple times. So this is it. And the 1st one is those career communities. So you click on that to open it up. And then you go to the one that you want to whoops. Where are we?
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Alex LaVin: So let’s say, we want to go to the social impact, one which covers international development and food and agriculture and environment. And then on the right hand side, it’s all divided into those different sections. So resources for climate change, solutions or nonprofits. Or I know there’s a global health in here as well.
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Alex LaVin: So all the pages are set up to, and they’re curated with all these great resources from the advisors.
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Alex LaVin: And okay, then I go back to the resources, all resources, and I won’t open all these up. But mid to mid is that alumni networking platform which is really a great resource for you. You can access it here. Here’s that list of past internships right? There going global is a great place to look for international internships. There are also big city guides to us city guides, so you can look.
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Alex LaVin: you know, for internships in San Francisco, for in general, and then idealist.org. I’ve talked about that a couple times that has great environmental education, nonprofit international positions. And I’m just going to open that up because that’s just a really useful one. So you’d go here, put it on internships.
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Alex LaVin: and then right now it says, Chicago, Illinois, so we’ll go with that, and then I’m going to go and look by issue area. And so the things that you’re interested in, let’s say you’re interested in arts and music
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Alex LaVin: and conflict, resolution and disaster, relief and economic development and housing and homelessness.
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Alex LaVin: hunger and food. Not sure why, sometimes you have to play with this a little bit, put in a default radius of 25 miles and then search.
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Alex LaVin: Okay. For some reason that’s not working right now. But usually it does. Or if you’re in a smaller town, and that’s where you want to be. You can look for organizations that fit those categories. Okay, so your hometown put in your hometown or your city and then search by those interest areas, and you would come up with organizations that fit your interest areas. And that’s when you contact them directly.
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Alex LaVin: So I’m going to stop. There. Are there any questions before we end completely?
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Alex LaVin: Thank you all for coming, and I hope that you know who to go to for help. Now, okay.
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Alex LaVin: thanks.
Hear from Your Peers
Our student staff member, Grace Mtunguja ‘26, took to the campus to gather internship advice from fellow Middlebury students who have been in your shoes. Whether you’re gearing up for your first internship or looking to maximize your next opportunity, these tips are sure to help.
In This Video:
- 00:00 - Introduction by Grace
- 00:43 - Choose Companies and Employees With Whose Values You Align: Anya ‘26
- 01:13 - It’s All About the Small Things: Matthew ‘26
- 01:34 - Don’t Be Afraid to Make Mistakes and Ask for Help: Kayla ‘26
- 01:51 - Hold Yourself Accountable and Work Hard: Brooke ‘26
- 02:24 - Network: Evelyn ‘24.5
- 02:27 - Over-communicate: Henry ‘26
- 02:51 - Do Something Out of Your Comfort Zone: Sheila ‘25
- 03:33 - Make Connections with Your Boss and the People Around You: Johnny ‘24.5
Student Stories from Summer Internships
At Middlebury, students don’t just learn how to engage the world—they go out and do it. Even in the midst of a pandemic, our resilient and innovative students participated in meaningful internships (many of them remote) this summer. They gained valuable experience, contributed to research on Covid-19, cancer and climate change, taught children, brought the arts online, and used language, writing, research, and analytical skills acquired at Middlebury to benefit major NGOs, corporations, non-profits, and campaigns.
Check out the recording of our Fall Family Weekend Zoom panel discussion below. Hear directly from Middlebury students about how transformative internship experiences can be and what advice they offer to help students find and secure the right internship for their interests.
Summer Internships Panel
Middlebury students share their transformative internship experiences and advice on finding the right internship. Hosted by the Center for Careers and Internships.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thanks everyone for coming and welcome from the Center for Careers and Internships, also known as CCI. I’m Cheryl Whitney Lower. I’m the associate director for internships and early engagement. And I’m joined here today by six Middlebury students who have agreed to share their stories about their internship experiences. Peggy Burns executive director for CCI will join us at the end of this session for questions. And then Rachel Connor is in the background. She’s our colleague at CCI and she is working this webinar. So we’ll have a Q&A section at the end. So feel free to write your questions in the Q&A section that you’ll find at the bottom of your screen. Before we get to the panelists, I’d to give a brief overview of internships and CCI’s internship programs.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
So many people know that internships have become increasingly important part of a student’s college experience. An internship is an opportunity to gain real world skills and experience by working for an organization, being mentored, and learning about different career paths. Supporting opportunities for experiential learning is a strategic priority for Middlebury. And Middlebury and CCI are committed to making these opportunities available for every Middlebury student.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Employers and organizations love our students because their Middlebury education has taught them to be creative thinkers and problem solvers, strong writers and collaborative team members. They have learned to conduct research, analyze texts, and data. They are smart and they can apply their liberal arts learning to their work and to larger world issues. Internships often result in our students having more clarity about how they want to spend their time at Middlebury, what they want to major in, what classes they’d to take, what kind of senior research they want to conduct, what issues they want to learn about, or get involved with as well as helping clarify their goals for the future.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
All the while they are building networks of people who can help them pursue those goals. Most Middlebury students do internships, lab experiences, or other experiential learning opportunities before they graduate, many do two or more. There are lots of windows of opportunities for students to participate in internships. So they don’t need to feel pressured to do one during their first summer or every summer. One of those opportunities at Middlebury is winter term. When students can participate in internship and earn credit for it. Most students are doing their internships during the summer. These summer internships are not for credit. We have a platform called Handshake where we have thousands of internships posted, and we have many, many other places for students to find internships. At CCI we have seven advisors who can work with students to find or create the right internship that fits their interests.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
The advisors all specialize in different areas, arts, media and communications, help professions in the STEM fields, business and finance, law, policy governance and consulting, social impact and education. If your student is interested in politics or medicine or international development or theater or studying glaciers in Alaska, we have an advisor for that. And if students have no idea what they want to do, that’s perfectly fine. We start with wherever students are and take them to the next step, helping them determine their interests, plan, explore, build their story and prepare for the future. We also have peer career advisors who can work with students to get them started, craft a resume or cover letter and answer questions. And we have a huge network of Middlebury alumni who are eager to advise students and help them find opportunities. Mid to mid is our alumni networking platform that connects students with alums for short term advice or for longer term mentoring relationships.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
There are lots of opportunities for students to find paid internships. The database I mentioned Handshake typically has about 65% paid internships and 35% unpaid internships. We recognize that some internships that students want to take part in are unpaid. So CCI offers internship funding grants in the summer for students with unpaid internships. We have $1000 grants for first year students and $3,000 grants for older students. This money comes mostly from alumni donors who recognize the value of internships and want to support our students.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
So now I’d really to get to the main part of this session and have our panelists tell the stories about their internships and what they’ve learned. I think from hearing their stories, I think you’ll see that there’s a rich display of experiences that they’ve had and what that will also demonstrate the breadth of opportunities available to students. Before we get to these questions, I’d just them to introduce themselves. So panelists I’ll call on each of you in turn, please introduce yourself with your name, your year, your major, and a couple of things that you’re involved with on campus. So Steve, can we start with you?
Steve Cayetano:
Yeah, definitely. Hi everyone. My name is Steve Cayetano. I am currently a junior, I’m part of the class of 2022. My major in Middlebury is neuroscience and I’m also on the premed track. Some organizations that I’m involved with on campus is Alianza Latinoamericana y Caribeña, it’s a cultural org that tries to enrich cultures based in people who identify as Hispanic, Latinex or Caribbean. And we try to promote a safe space and a cultural space for anyone to enjoy at Middlebury.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you and Mary.
Mary McCourt:
Hi everyone. I’m Mary McCourt. I’m a senior Feb Middlebury. So I’ll be graduating February of 2022. I’m an economics major and I’m double minoring in political science in American studies. On campus I am the social chair for Middlebury Women on Wall Street. I run the TMT group for Middlebury’s Student Investment Committee and I’m also a peer career advisor at the CCI. So if anyone has any questions about what the PCA’s can do, happy to answer them.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Okay. Thank you. And Jack.
Jack Allnutt:
Hi everyone. I’m Jack Allnutt. I’m a super senior Feb, so I’m on my last semester here at Middlebury. I’m an architectural studies and environmental studies joint major. And on campus, I am very involved in the habitat for humanity community engaged projects that we worked on, with design, affordable housing for Addison County and Virginia. So that takes a lot of my time. I’m also on the log rolling team. That’s fun.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you. And Francoise.
Francoise Niyigena:
Hi everyone. I wish I could see everybody’s face, but it’s really nice to have everyone to join us today. My name is Francoise Niyigena and I’m a senior graduating 2021, hopefully. But I am doing a double major in neuroscience and psychology with a minor in education studies. And my biggest passion is empowering young people. I’m hoping to do that through rethinking education systems. In terms of my involvement on campus, I am the co-director for the SG Diversity Equity and Inclusion this year. I’m also a social entrepreneurship fellow at The Center for Creativity and Innovation. I’m a Bold Women’s scholar. And finally, I’m a student on the student advisory council for the psych department.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you, Nate, how about you, go next?
Nate Gunesch:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m Nate Gunesch. I am a senior here at Middlebury. I am a political science major. Here on campus I am involved in a couple of different things. So I’m involved in something called Dolci, which is a student pop up restaurant on campus. Hasn’t been operating this year. It’s a little bit hard for students to be running the show in the dining hall but that’s a really cool opportunity. I’m also involved at the Knoll which is the college’s organic farms. So I’m one of the interns out there this fall.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you, Nate, and Slone.
Slone Parker:
Hi, you all. I’m Slone. I am a junior and I’m double majoring in biochem and history. So I used to row with mid crew, but since I’m not on campus this semester, fortunately I can’t. And I’m the secretary of the American Chemical Society branch at Midd.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you very much. Okay. So now we’d to hear your stories about this summer and what you learned and how internships connect to your academics and plans for the future and any wisdom you’d like to share for other students. And of course, I’m sure in your storage, we’ll probably hear about how COVID-19 impacted your plans this summer. So I’ll just say what the order’s going to be, and then I’ll call on you. So Francoise, we’re going to start with you and then Slone, then Jack, then Mary, then Steve, then Nate. So Francoise, we look forward to hearing about your story and your summer.
Francoise Niyigena:
All right. Thank you. So I guess I’ll start by mentioning that in terms of the different opportunities I’ve had, because obviously I’m a senior and graduating soon. So I’ve been lucky and privileged to have different opportunities from the CCI. And a lot of it has been around education and I’ve been looking for opportunities around organizations that are doing rethinking education in a way that they’re providing more alternative education opportunities. So this summer I actually was going to do an internship in Australia, but that got canceled with COVID. So I missed out on that. I was out here trying to figure out, okay what do I do now? I was going through Handshake and trying to figure out how last minute thing. And I came across an opportunity to work with Team4Tech and Team4Tech actually partners with the CCI, so, which is awesome.
Francoise Niyigena:
It’s an unpaid internship, but we get a stipend of $1000. And so Team4Tech partners with nonprofits from different countries across the world, but really with organizations and schools that are providing tech ed solutions for underserved communities. And so this year we partnered with an organization in Malawi, one in Rwanda and one in Kenya which was great because I also got to work with about 24 girls in Rwanda. I was working on three teams, but I think the ones I was most excited about was working with the girls, one on social innovations that they were all working on. And so I had the opportunity to be their mentor and then the other one was kind of guiding them in the whole college application process. So I guess challenges with that was time difference because these girls were in Rwanda and I was here in Middlebury and it was about seven hours’ time difference.
Francoise Niyigena:
But the other piece of it was also just access to resources because not all of them had access to internet or computers, even though we had to do Zoom calls or WhatsApp calls. I was challenged to be creative around that. I ended up studying a YouTube channel because I was thinking, well, I want this girls… I had a couple frameworks that I wanted to work with them through. I was hoping to really work directly with each of them, but didn’t know how to make that possible if I couldn’t connect with all the groups or all the girls at the same time.
Francoise Niyigena:
So I figured, well, YouTube channel, they can watch these videos ahead of time. And then when I can I’ll check in individually or two or three of the girls when I can and when they’re available and depending on what resources they have access to. I think that worked great. So yeah, just learning to be flexible along the way and my schedule is very, very flexible too, because sometimes they were available at 10:00 PM and other times not available at 8:00 AM and so, we didn’t have a fixed work schedule, but I also really appreciated just the challenge to be creative in the process. Yeah.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Okay. And does that connect at all with your academics or what you’re thinking about for the future?
Francoise Niyigena:
Oh yeah, absolutely. So in the future, I’m really wanting to work with young people. A lot of, I guess what I want to do is thinking about my own education experience. I feel my own my education experience was very wrought learning, rigid education system. I feel it takes so much away from young people in terms of being innovative and just really untapping their full potential. So what I wanted this to work with young people I was doing over the summer in terms of social change or supporting them and figuring out what opportunities are out there and figuring out their strengths and how they can tap into the different opportunities. And then in general rethinking education systems to integrate things like social change, innovation, emotional intelligence, and so on. And I’ve had opportunities to do that in my other internships for the summers before this one.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you very much. Yes. It seems you’re making a big impact in education already, and I’m glad that you found that opportunity. So Slone you’re up next. We look forward to hearing about your experience.
Slone Parker:
Hi everyone. So originally I had planned to do research over the summer, but unfortunately it was also canceled. It’s a little bit of a theme here. I also am a premed like Steve, so I had a shadowing opportunity and I was really excited about that also got canceled. So I was in a bit of a panic kind of toward the end of the spring about what I was going to do this summer. So fortunately I’m subscribed to the CCI’s healthcare emails in which they email out several opportunities on a semi-weekly basis. And so I read through some of those CCI emails and I’m also subscribed to this company called Volunteer Match, which I would really highly recommend signing up for it because it finds volunteering in your area.
Slone Parker:
And if you put in some of your interests, it can find topical volunteering interests. So I was able to look through those two and meet with Hannah Benz, who is the healthcare advisor at the CCI. And we talked through some ideas that I had about what good volunteering opportunities might be for me and how I could get involved. Because I really wanted to do something that would help out with COVID because as hopefully a future healthcare professional, I thought it would be a really important thing to be involved with. So I actually was really happy that I ended up changing my summer plans. So I volunteered with the North Texas Red Cross and did online work for a COVID vaccine dashboard company. It’s called COVID-.org. If you want to look it up, but basically it lists out clinical trials of vaccines that are currently being held, if you want to volunteer to participate in one of them, sometimes they’re recruiting healthy volunteers.
Slone Parker:
So I would really recommend looking that up as well. But yeah, I thought the opportunities were really incredible. I got to help some underserved communities with the North Texas Red Cross, and also there is a blood shortage right now, especially with COVID, it’s actually making it worse. And it was really interesting to apply things that I learned about healthcare actually at actually at Midd. So over J term Midd has an internship, an EMT internship program that partners with the Middlebury regional EMS. And over the span of J term, which is just one month in January, you are trained as an EMT and you end the J term with taking the test to become licensed. So because of that experience, I was able to actually really help with the North Texas Red Cross prepping blood stations and also talking with donors about how COVID affects people’s health and proper health care precautions to take.
Slone Parker:
So yeah, I really thought that was an awesome way, integrated things I had learned at Midd. And it also was topical for my healthcare dreams. My second internship kind of opportunity was with the COVID Dashboard, which really helped me apply everything I had learned in mid classrooms about chem and biochem. I am a biochem major, so it was really cool actually reading through real clinical trials and how researchers are currently testing COVID vaccines and therapeutics medicines, and being able to translate those things to a wider audience. So more people can know about what’s really going on and where we’re at with research on COVID. So overall I’m really thankful for having this opportunity because I think I was able to make the most out of a summer that really probably shaped everyone.
Slone Parker:
And I felt I was able to make a difference even in spite of COVID. So I would really recommend looking into things that you’re interested in. The CCI has all sorts of emails and things on their websites for opportunities in your interest areas. So looking into those things and applying early, it’s always a big help. Thanks.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
So thank you for mentioning all those Slone, and I’m glad that you also mentioned the winter term internship that you’ve taken advantage of before, and also glad to hear your plug for donating blood. So thank you. Jack, how about you?
Jack Allnutt:
Yeah. So to give a little bit of context to my summer internship this past summer ever since I had this semester off my first semester of college when I had nothing to do, the only job I could find during that time was a construction labor job in which I was doing residential remodel framing and construction labor.
Jack Allnutt:
And I really actually found it very satisfying to be building tangible things with my hands. So throughout my time at Middlebury, I’ve pursued things that have allowed me to make really tangible, physical changes to the world. So I’ve been working with the Habitat for Humanity Chapter and designing these houses. And I also participated in the Zero Energy School Design competition, which took place, it was J term of 2017. It was a student led project in which we had really interdisciplinary students that were from a number of majors and we all came together and designed net zero energy school.
Jack Allnutt:
And in the process of that, I actually met my mentor for this past summer internship. His name is Addison Godine. And he’s the guy who actually designed one of our solar decathlon houses on campus and he’s a really inspiration person to me.
Jack Allnutt:
I just reached out to him this past summer after I had been living in the solar decathlon house, I had applied earlier and had this very personal connection to him because he had helped with this project that we worked on and which we actually got first place in US Department of Energy. And then, that’s kind of my trajectory into this experience. I was really excited, last spring I was going to be onsite working as a project engineer and also design intern.
Jack Allnutt:
So it was really excited to be onsite and actually guiding… He’s starting is this modular construction company now called Live Light Buildings that I was working for, or that I had arranged my internship for. I was going to be onsite, really making sure that everything got built and producing construction documents for him. That didn’t really work out. I didn’t end up being able to be in person, but as I attended to a remote internship, his entire company because of COVID had to really make substantial pivots to the residential sector instead of, he was going to be designing modular hotel buildings that were factory built, really high efficiency, volumetric modular buildings. But he ended up having to completely change his entire business plan because in the startup world, a lot of people are realizing that, “Oh hotels aren’t being developed anymore and now we need better housing.”
Jack Allnutt:
So seeing how fast things changed remotely was really interesting. And I think over the course of the internship I was really amazed by how much you can do with just a laptop. It’s disappointing that you can’t be out on site really managing things in person, but just with Excel and all these building modeling software and the Adobe Suite, which is great to know that you can produce a lot for the company. So I was glad to be able to contribute throughout the summer and because of COVID and the lack of funding that the company had, I wasn’t able to secure a paid internship. So I was really grateful that CCI was able to step in at the last minute and make sure that I had the funding to do this and work with a guy that I was hoping to work with in the future.
Jack Allnutt:
Everything is so influx now that can’t really know for sure, but yeah, I think I kind of wished throughout my time at Middlebury I had gone to the CCI more frequently because I have a lot of my search for jobs that I’ve done independently. I could have probably found some very interesting experiences earlier on, but I definitely think reaching out to people where you cannot through any experience that you have at Middlebury, trying weird interdisciplinary projects and volunteering for Habitat for Humanity or whatever organizations you can on campus will connect you with some interesting people and reaching out to alumni is always a good idea. So, yeah.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Great. Thank you very much. And Jack, I know in your reflection this summer, you wrote about an experience that wouldn’t have been possible if the situation hadn’t turned your internship into remote, where you were given a half an hour notice that you could participate in a conference.
Jack Allnutt:
Yeah, I do think the anonymity of Zoom culture that we’re in right now is definitely not something to be overlooked. And the fact that someone me if I were in person walking into an in person conference we were pitching our idea for our startup to develop affordable housing for the city of Boston. Because they have a massive housing shortage problem there. And we were pitching our ideas for zero energy modular concepts and coming from a liberal arts background, a lot of people will see that your credentials if you’re not… You don’t have a master’s in architecture then it’s hard to really get into a lot of these things. But the anonymity of the Zoom background, you can just jump into a conversation with professionals and they don’t know that you’re an undergraduate with no really technical experience in their field. I was able to learn a lot from them and participate and contribute my ideas. So yeah, that’s definitely something to take advantage of you end up in a Zoom or internship in the future. So yeah.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you very much. Okay, Mary you’re next.
Mary McCourt:
Thanks Cheryl. Over the summer I was fortunate enough to secure a full time well paid internship at Siebert Williams Shank, which is a largest minority and women owned investment bank on Wall Street. Well, I’m not able to discuss exactly specifics of the clients we worked with I can say that investment banking, we were raising capital for large companies, many of which you would know of off the fortune 500 list. And something really interesting about what I did was I joined a very small team of about six people. And in my first week on the job, the first year analyst who was supposed to be kind of my big sister, unfortunately had to leave due to the Visa restrictions and she’s an international employee. So while she was absent, I had to take on her responsibilities and to really step into that full time role from day one.
Mary McCourt:
So a lot of it was drinking out of the fire hose, but being able to learn from senior level management and also working with a small team, we were able to cover a lot of the product groups of investment banking. So I had exposure to investment grade capital markets, leverage finance and equity capital markets, which is very special because most other banks you’re covering one of those sectors, but I had a lot of really great exposure. Other specific things I did, I helped work on pitch books to get more clients, did a lot of Excel modeling, working in the Bloomberg terminal, getting Excel certified. I also wrote our capital markets monitor every day. So I would read the Wall Street Journal, write up a one page report using Bloomberg data and send it out to all of our clients. And it was awesome knowing that my emails were going out to heads of companies all over the US.
Mary McCourt:
In terms of finding my internship, I think so for this one, I was actually able to get it through a family connection, but I think speaking about my internship with Morgan Stanley next summer will be more helpful.
Mary McCourt:
So recruiting for investment banking is very, very rigorous and there’s a real formula that goes to it. Essentially, you need to know that you want to do investment banking by the end of your sophomore year. And had I not been in a Middlebury woman on Wall Street or student investment committee and going to the CCI, I definitely would have missed out on these deadlines. So kind of some advice around finding an internship on Wall Street, definitely subscribe to our SLO newsletters that come out every Sunday. It kind of gives you a picture of different events that are happening, banks that are coming to visit. It helps you know how the process is moving along, getting your resume up to shape.
Mary McCourt:
Your resume, your elevator pitch are extremely, extremely important when looking for a job on Wall Street and the CCI send really great resources to be able to keep up with the extreme process. I also found out a lot about internships to go into diversity events and again, banks coming to visit on campus and recruiting. I am a PCA, so I do work with the CCI. I specifically help students with their cover letters, help approve them, help them start search for internships, give them advice. So definitely the PCA’s are a really great resource to have. I spoke to the PCA’s who are now on Wall Street when I was a freshmen and sophomore recruiting and they were very helpful. And then in terms of COVID-19 and my summer internship at Siebert William Shank, our intern class is usually between 10 and 15 students.
Mary McCourt:
Because of COVID, they cut that class down to two interns. So it was only me and one other intern, the other 10 to 12 students lost their internships. So I was fortunate enough to keep mine, and then we were also moved remotely. So it was very difficult technical wise, just because there’s so many regulations around investment banking, having what you have in front of your computer is very strict. Was not allowed to have headphones in, can’t have your phone out. But other than that, pretty tough trying to mimic a Wall Street trading floor remotely. And then I was motivated to do this internship because I’m interested in finance. I actually had my Morgan Stanley internship before I got my Seabird internship. So that just goes to show you how accelerated the processes having Morgan Siebert almost a year and a half before the internship actually starts is pretty crazy.
Mary McCourt:
But other than that skills from Middlebury liberal arts, I think because we don’t have a finance major, it puts us at some disadvantage, but I also think Middlebury’s liberal arts education really teaches us how to learn communication skills, writing, which are all really, really important. And if you look back on the things that I did at Siebert, I was writing capital markets updates to our clients, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to have a finance major. You really need to know how to write them. You don’t want to send out writing that’s bad to your clients.
Mary McCourt:
And then it definitely enriched my plans for the future. I know I want to do investment banking and I’m glad to know what it’s like before jumping into a more serious internship next year.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you for all that advice, Mary, and we’re very glad to have Mary as one of our peer career advisors. And in fact, she was just on the Zoom drop in hours that we call quick questions where students can drop in and get help with resumes. So right before this Zoom session, she was doing that work. So Steve returning to you next, and I believe that this summer internship had some relationship to something you did during winter term.
Steve Cayetano:
Yes, definitely. So this winter term, during J term, I was able to have an internship for the month of January, thanks to the help of professor Jessica Holmes who’s in the econ department. And keep in mind, I’m a neuroscience major. So I really don’t get involved with econ at all. I’ve just been curious, but I’ve never taken a class.
Steve Cayetano:
So I actually found it through one of my friends that was also considering taking one because she was offering many internships. And the internship that I was able to get into was working with a nonprofit organization in Vermont, it’s called The Mum Program for Quality in Healthcare. And in during January, I was on tests with sending out a mental health survey to all mental health professionals in Vermont and surveying if they were up to date with suicide prevention specifically. I was tasked with writing a report updating and monitoring the survey.
Steve Cayetano:
So I can see how many healthcare professionals are answering the survey, who hasn’t had training in some five years when he’s to get updated training and accessibility of training and so forth. I also directly contacted those mental health counselors to see if they can try and persuade them to take the survey. And the Vermont program from quality and health care really was something that I resonate with in the sense of their values, because they want to ensure that everybody no matter who lives in Vermont is able to access quality health care regardless of their background. With my premed passion, I really want to go into the healthcare field, not necessarily just to become a doctor, but to help underserved communities really have access to quality care as well. That’s one of my passions, public health policy, and which is why I was so excited to take that internship during J term.
Steve Cayetano:
So moving forward during my spring semester at Middlebury I got a call from the director of VPQHC and they actually wanted me back to spearhead a project that the director has been wanting to do for a while, which was to create a database for both the health regions in Vermont and see what types of healthcare are available within certain health regions. Middlebury’s a health region in Vermont and there’s 13 other ones. But I was tasked with focusing on one specific region in Vermont for the summer. I had created database using Microsoft access. I’ve never used it before. And during the summer I had to basically self-teach myself because the director was always, she’s very busy and no one was really able to directly help me. But if I reached out to anybody in the office, I was able to really get the help that I needed, any advice that I needed as well to help create the database.
Steve Cayetano:
But it was also refreshing having that position to spearhead a whole project by yourself. I think I was able to really apply my liberal arts education into this. And Middlebury has given me so far with writing, research, and compiling all this into a very structural database so that anybody can use it. My main goal was so that I can create the database so that the common Vermonter can give it to a state legislator, can have access to it and have ease of access to easily find what type of community health clinics are in the Middlebury region? What types of dental offices are there? Are there sufficient amounts of mental health counselors within the area? It was a really great experience.
Steve Cayetano:
For the most part the internship was flexible. I didn’t really have to worry about if I had to be in the office or be remote. Most of my work was going to be on a laptop. So it was a very flexible experience. I didn’t really have to worry where I was thankfully, but it did help a lot when I was in the office.
Steve Cayetano:
I was able to safely travel to Vermont and stay there for a month. Obviously following state guidelines and being very precautious. But it was really refreshing as well, being in an office setting, being with other professionals that are really passionate about wanting to provide health care to Vermonters. And it was just nice that they also wanted me back since my experience and the work that I did during January. It was nice to see that all your hard work can really bring you back opportunities with people that are in your field. And so it was really motivating and this experience really and encouraged me to pursue a career other than a neuroscience career, but to pursue a career in public health policy developments that people can really have access to these healthcare resources and no matter where they come from.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you very much, Steve. And thank you for that important work that you’re doing in Vermont and on behalf of Vermonters. And just one of the points you brought up, I hear over and over again from interns about they’re in their internship and being asked to do something that they’ve never done before, but because of your Middlebury’s skills and your approach to the liberal arts, you teach yourself how to do it. I know employers are impressed over and over again. So obviously they were impressed to have you back, so great. And we’re going to finish up with you, Nate. I know you were involved in some really interesting research and policy this summer.
Nate Gunesch:
Yeah, definitely. Thanks Cheryl. So I had a bit of a funky experience. I think everybody getting situated this summer. I mentioned in the brief introduction that I’m currently an intern out at the Knoll, the organic garden on campus. I was slated to be the summer intern at the Knoll actually. And that is a job that I lined up very early basically in the winter, last winter. But of course everything got a little catawampus as everyone has noted. And so I sort of went back to the drawing board started putting the CCI resources to use in a way that I really hadn’t in the past. Most of my past work experience, in fact, all of my past work experience has been service industry stuff or construction. I’ve always been sort of hands on professional type of guy. So I’ve done a lot of stuff in restaurants over the last several years, but this summer I knew I really wanted to use my mind a little bit more.
Nate Gunesch:
So in light of a COVID-19 I used Handshake and was able to find a position with the Center on Terrorism Extremism, and Counter Terrorism, it’s sort of small, fairly new think tank that has sprung up out of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Like I said, I found a position with them through Handshake, got in contact with the supervisor there. It turns out he was a Middlebury grad from a few years ago who was a policy major who had the same advisor as me in the policy department and went abroad to the same place that I did. So it was really a good example of how sort of useful some of those connections and the network that we have here is. So I really hit it off with him well and was able to line up the internship.
Nate Gunesch:
It ended up being a great position. I ran for a few months this summer, I was able to do quite a bit of really neat research. Because it was remote, I was quite independent. So I really got to use a lot of the research and writing skills that I’ve developed here at Middlebury over the last couple of years here and put them to good use. I would check in with my advisor once, maybe twice a week, get put in the right direction and then work sort of seven or eight hours, the hours that worked best for me, very independent, it was really nice. And ultimately got to do some really cool research projects. So I think the most sort of pressing one was a project we did on Boogaloo movement.
Nate Gunesch:
So I don’t know if anyone is following the news this summer, but the Boogaloo movement is a far right militia group that stood up a lot of trouble at various Black Lives matter protests over the summer. My supervisor and I did some really cool hands on research. We were on Facebook and Twitter late at night, tracking these guys communications. And then looking at the way they would talk to each other in the comments of a Facebook post, they were sending maps of Minneapolis back and forth. It was really, really interesting to be involved in such not literally boots on the ground because we had to be remote, but it seemed like sort of boots on the ground online research, it was pretty neat. And we were able to get published, get referenced by some pretty big profile newspapers.
Nate Gunesch:
And yeah, I ended up having a really good experience, got to do a couple of more projects I’m a little bit more passionate about with them. So really it was funky getting there, but once I had the experience, I had a really wonderful time, and I was really glad to as a poly psych major I’ve been interested for a long time in eventually getting a position maybe not necessarily in Washington DC, but perhaps doing something with policy oriented, think tanks, or various nonprofits, or NGOs. This was a really good dipping my toes in the water.
Nate Gunesch:
I enjoyed doing research with the think tank, getting to know the atmosphere and environment of a think tank. And yeah, it was great. It had a lot to do with my previous research interests, a little bit of overlap with the senior thesis that I’m writing this year. And hopefully next year I’ve already started looking toward positions at think tanks and similar like policy oriented groups. So it was really good experience to get into the field that I am excited to get into. And I’m really glad it worked out. I had a great experience.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you so much, Nate. So yeah, that sounds like a very different from what you had planned, so to work in the organic garden. So and I think that’s a theme that we’re hearing among all of you, as well as many of the other students that we funded or that we know did internships this summer, that things weren’t working out at the beginning of the summer, but our students are really innovative and creative and created new opportunities for themselves.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Sometimes having something totally different sort of points you in a new direction or opens your horizons to things that you wouldn’t have expected if you had done what you had planned. So cheers to all of you for taking advantage and making the most of it and really making the most of your experiences.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
So I’d like to thank all of you panelists, you were fantastic, and I’m thanking you for your inspiration and wisdom and advice. I’d want to just end with one last question to all of you. If you could please share a lesson learned or a piece of advice for future interns, and this could be kind of quick and I’ll just run off the order. So who’s who I’m going to call them, but it’ll be Jack, then Francoise, then Steve, Mary, Nate, and Slone. So Jack starting with you.
Jack Allnutt:
Oh boy. So yeah, I’d say, like I said, I touched on earlier the anonymity of Zoom culture is definitely something to be taken advantage of. Even if there’s something that’s a conference or an event that you might not be directly invited to, just be looking for things that you can learn from and share your ideas because it’s a rare opportunity, but also yeah, I’d say reaching out to alumni is always very important. And yeah, I think there are a lot of really interesting people in any fields, but I’ve gotten to know various and are always really excited to talk to you and whether they have a job to offer you or not nowadays they can usually guide you in the right direction you’re trying to go.
Jack Allnutt:
So I’m glad I started really early last year in the process of looking for a job. Even if you’re really unsure of what you want to do, where do you want to go, just talking to alumnus can give you a sense of what things are like in the real world beyond Middlebury. I think there’s a lot to learn from alumni. So yeah.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you. Okay. Francoise.
Francoise Niyigena:
I would just say I think that’s something that Jack mentioned earlier, but reach out. I think that you might find that maybe the internships that you want to do is not something that already exists, that you might find on Handshake or really anywhere on a site that says, “Oh, here’s an internship that is open or a job opportunity.” But that doesn’t mean you can’t do what you want to do. I think I found that a lot of the opportunities I ended up getting into were maybe I had an idea or a project in mind, but I looked at different sites and couldn’t really find something that excited me, but I did find a few maybe organizations. And I was, this organization doesn’t say they have an internship position or a job application.
Francoise Niyigena:
I mean a job position, but I’m still going to reach out to the founder of this organization. And my first internships, my first year and my sophomore year, I actually just ended up reaching out to the founders and CEOs of these two different organizations. And I told them, “Hey, this is what I’m passionate about. This is how it connects to what you’re doing. This is what I would like to do with you all this summer, is that possible?” And they actually emailed back and were very excited.
Francoise Niyigena:
So I essentially ended up designing my own internship, but with guidance from them. And I think that is something that you can do, but I don’t know how often you hear people say that. Something that I learned during mid-co from a Middlebury alum, this Middlebury alum basically saying you either be the CEO or reach out to the CEO. I think basically what he meant was you don’t have to be limited by what job opportunities or internship opportunities are out there, open, but maybe you don’t find an opening, but that’s something you really are passionate about and you still reach out to those people and tell them what you want to do.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Okay. Thank you. On to you, Steve.
Steve Cayetano:
I think one piece of advice just going back to me using a new software program that I never used before. Going into an internship it’s easy to like get intimidated by a task or a new challenge, but honestly you got to embrace it. And you’ve just got to make sure that your resources are available and reach out when you need help, because it honestly does help.
Steve Cayetano:
You’re not alone handling this task. With me, it was, I could have easily said you know what? I don’t think I can do that, but now I ended up saying, being confident about it and taking it head on because it allowed me to put a new skill let’s say on my resume. But more than that, it was able to show that I was able to teach myself in something and be proficient in it in the end and produce something that’ll make under director or my employer very happy. At the end of the reach a common goal.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Great. Thank you. That’s good advice, Mary.
Mary McCourt:
I’d say the key to getting an internship is networking, whether that’s in finance or anywhere else. A piece of advice that was given to me about networking was it’s not necessarily who you know but it’s really who knows you. And just a quick little anecdote. The first internship I had was actually in an oncology office and the way I ended up getting that was I was working in a hockey shop, sharpening skates, I’m covered in dirt, sweating, I’m in sweat pants, don’t look great, definitely do not look professional.
Mary McCourt:
One of the customers I was working with noticed my great work ethic, awesome attitude, and just started talking to me about what I wanted to do career wise. And back then I thought I wanted to do premed. And he said, well, listen, I know you’re making a minimum wage at a hockey shop right now, but I have a friend looking to get an intern in his oncology office. Would you be interested? So you never know who’s watching, literally take everything you do as if you have an interview because you don’t know who’s going to open you up to what opportunity.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Great. Thank you, Mary. Nate.
Nate Gunesch:
Yeah, this is a lot of good advice. I’ve been writing these down. I think something I really learned this summer it was a good lesson in intrinsic motivation. Like I mentioned, sort of in two ways, right? So one, because I have worked so much in the past doing things like working in restaurants, waiting tables, working in catering and stuff. I definitely had sort of put the internships and the some of that professional networking type stuff on the back burner.
Nate Gunesch:
But I think that in the end, that was okay because I was willing to sort of push myself when it came down to it. As Mary pointed out in certain fields, you got to push yourself a little earlier, if you’re doing IB or consulting, but in a lot of fields, know your deadlines and then don’t put too much pressure on yourself to get the perfect internship every time. And then once you do get it, even if it’s independent, even if it’s a little funky in some ways, really push yourself to make a lot of whatever experience you’re having, it could be not what you were expecting. But it can end up being a really good opportunity for growth. It can be a really good opportunity for networking and you can learn a lot from it. So again, it’s really important to not put too much pressure on yourself at any point. And then when you do get the opportunities that you get, take advantage of them and really push yourself, don’t just rely on other people motivating you.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Okay. Thank you, Nate. And we’ll end with you Slone.
Slone Parker:
I would have to say if you’re looking for an internship, make sure that you meet with your CCI advisors in the field that you’re interested in. I think I cannot think of a more helpful resource for pre-meds then Hannah Benz.
Slone Parker:
I remember I met with her because I was actually looking for some shadowing work or an internship. And she found Middlebury was funding specifically, Texas pre-meds to… It was like a very, very niche internship, Texas pre-meds to shadow this really well known Texas doctor. And it was a very niche internship, but there’s so many things that Middlebury offers that are very niche and sometimes it can be difficult to find on your own, and I cannot stress it enough meeting with the CCI advisors is so helpful for organizing yourself and finding new opportunities.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
Thank you, Slone. And thanks to all of you. That was just really excellent advice. We’re going to have to write all that down so we can share it with others too, but obviously this recording will be available to students as well.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
So thank you again. I know I’m inspired by hearing all your stories and how you pivoted this summer. And I think as Francoise said that whatever your interest is, you can really develop your experiences and build your story while you go through Middlebury. You’ve all just demonstrated that you all have very unique interests and that you created or built experiences for yourself.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
So thank you to all of you and to our audience thank you for your participation today. Whether you’re watching live or watching in the future. I want to assure parents who are watching that CCI is here for your students. We are part of their support network at Middlebury. And for students, we’re always here for you to help you with exploration, decision-making, planning, preparation, and more. So wherever you are in your process, we’re here to help always whether we are remote or in person. So we’re going take you to the next step and help you explore what’s next. And now our CCI executive director, Peggy Burns has come on and we’ll open up the floor for questions. So feel free to write questions in the Q&A and it can be either of us answering or directed to any of the students. So Peggy have you?
Peggy Burns:
Yeah, there’s just one big thank you.
Cheryl Whitney Lower:
It’s a thank you not a question.
Peggy Burns:
And also too, I just wanted to echo what Cheryl just said as well. I mean, first of all, thank you students, what a fabulous job this was and how much we appreciate you doing this for families, but then also to hear your stories and how you’ve pivoted. Cheryl and I have the privilege to read hundreds and hundreds of the evaluations of our funded interns. And it has just really been extraordinary the way that you have pivoted and how resilient you were and just how it just all seemed to work out.
Peggy Burns:
Thanks to your perseverance. Also, Cheryl mentioned before we at CCI are part of the stellar Middlebury advising family, we’re advisors, we’re connectors, we’re educators, we’re mentors. So families who are students are in good hands, I can promise you that.
First-Year and Sophomore Internships
Monday, March 15, 2021
Previous Middlebury interns will give firsthand advice and insight on:
- decision-making related to internships or other summer experiences
- picking an internship if you have multiple interests
- finding paid internships or applying for CCI’s funding for unpaid internships
- preparing for and being successful in your internship
- the impact of internships, and more
Co-sponsored by CCI and BluePrint. Panelists: Sophie Bardetti ’22, Melanie De Jesus ‘22, Sam Madeiros ’22 and Ivan Terrones ‘21. Facilitators: Nolan Shapiro ’21 and Cheryl Whitney Lower, CCI.
Coming soon…
Types of Internships
Cohort Internships
Middlebury has several cohort internship programs where students intern at different organizations but share a common thread in terms of geography and/or theme.
These programs most often include an academic and/or professional development curriculum that helps students understand the theme more systemically and more formally learn from one another. The framework of a cohort work, living, and learning experience adds value and contributes to the goals of a liberal arts education to prepare our students for life, work, and citizenship. There is perhaps no greater means to connect learning with work and career exploration, while building community among students of diverse backgrounds.
Individual internship listings can be found in Handshake, or email us at internships@middlebury.edu for general inquiries. Read more about some of Middlebury’s current signature cohort programs below.
Summer Internships
MiddWorks for Vermont Summer Internship Program is a program out of the Center for Careers and Internships (CCI) offering carefully curated summer student internships in 2025 with a variety of organizations throughout Vermont that advance the following goals:
- a robust Vermont economy
- a just Vermont society
- a healthy Vermont population
- a “green” Vermont environment
- equitable access to excellence in education
- a vibrant Vermont arts and cultural scene
In addition to providing place-based experiential learning at its best, MiddWorks for Vermont will foster internship and career opportunities in every sector, thereby encouraging and facilitating Middlebury talent to remain in Vermont during summers, after graduation, and beyond. We hope to encourage meaningful and deep connections to Vermont so you and other students may consider Vermont as a place to settle and to have a high quality of life while finding rewarding and purposeful work—an ideal opportunity for students and graduates to apply their liberal arts and sciences learning in an impactful way.
- The Biblioteca David Kitson in Nosara, Costa Rica hires 4 Middlebury College interns every January term and summer to support their English as a Second Language program. Interns teach English to local children and adults. Interns are responsible for managing small groups of students, leading activities and lessons, and managing lessons and materials. (Not offered for Summer 2025)
- diiVe offers fast-paced, intensive global consulting internships for students from around the world in Cape Town, South Africa. Students engage in an immersive 7-week consulting internship program featuring a 2-week remote consulting bootcamp and a 5-week hands-on, project-based internship over the summer. diiVe works with a range of organizations from large global firms firms to savvy, tech start-ups and NGOs, while training students to excel in the world of work. J-term and remote experiences also available.
- The Minneapolis Institute of Art offers an intensive 8-week summer internship for 3-4 students designed to prepare you for a successful museum career. Depending on your interest and placement, you will work with a Director, Archivist, or Curator in the Department of Asian Art, European Art, Global Contemporary Art, or Arts Administration (to include DEI, Marketing, Development/Fundraising).
- Middlebury Social Impact Corps (MSIC) is a partnership-based program that connects students to social change through unique experiential learning opportunities. A select cohort of Middlebury College (Interns) and MIIS graduate students (Scholars*) are matched with a community partner focused on impact within a local/regional context. Six pillars guide this program: adaptability, commitment, inquiry, narrative, reflection, and partnership. Through partnership, MSIC members gain knowledge, skills, and dispositions for purposeful careers in social impact. Students engage in community-based research, partnership development, mentorship relevant to the community partner and communities with whom they work, preparing them to become purposeful global citizens in the field of social impact. MSIC is funded in collaboration with Conflict Transformation Experiential learning and Graduate pillars. (Managed by the Elizabeth Hackett Robinson ‘84 Innovation Hub.)
- Privilege & Poverty Internships engage students through national and local programs to address issues of poverty and support social justice. Nationally, selected students choose from over 100 Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty (SHECP) internships while, locally, the Center for Community Engagement has partnerships with about six Addison County agencies. (Managed by the Center for Community Engagement.)
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Vermont Business Strategy and Consulting Program is for students interested in leading a business, non-profit, or other organization, or in management consulting as a career. Students are given in-depth hands-on experience working on a key strategic management issue for local enterprise. The cohort gathers weekly with Dr. Amitava Biswas, instructor in the Introduction to Business and Management Enterprise courses.
- The Vermont Innovation Summer is a program supporting a cohort of students working at companies and on self-directed projects across Vermont’s innovation ecosystem. The program was designed to create a community around innovative work, connect students to Vermont-based innovation organizations and alumni, and provide opportunities for reflection. The goal of the program is to put students in a position to take full advantage of the resources Vermont has to offer. (Managed by the Elizabeth Hackett Robinson ‘84 Innovation Hub.)
Conflict Transformation
CCI is proud to support the work of the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation. Please read more about this important initiative and the grant that will advance the program.
CCI awards internship funding for US and global internships that incorporate conflict transformation. For the purposes of internship funding, we are defining conflict transformation as working with organizations that are “creating adaptive responses and constructive change to go beyond resolution and address root causes of human conflict to advance peace, justice, and healthy relationships and communities.”
Summer CCI-funded internships include:
- Religious Freedom Institute
- American Council on Education
- diiVe Consulting
- The Spero Project
- Economic Policy Institute
- Institute for Climate and Peace
- Restore Justice
- Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism
- Team4Tech
- Hyde Park Refugee Project
- Empathetics
- State and Main Mediation
- Shelburne Farms
- Alan Sonfist Studio
- Harvard Graduate School of Education Making Caring Common Project
- Faith In Place
- Algerian Society of North America
- Homeboy Industries
- Kula Kamala Foundation & Yoga Ashram
- Greater Toledo Social Services for the Arab Community
- Norval Foundation
- Intellisia Institute
- Africa Digital Media
CCI is providing internship funding related to conflict transformation for Winter Term 2025 and again in Summer 2025. Please email Cheryl Whitney Lower, Associate Director for Internships and Career Exploration, with questions.