Internship grants available from CDC

The IU Career Development Center is trying to fix a pipeline this summer — a figurative one, that is.
 
Summer internships are considered a recruiting pipeline in which employers notice qualified students and potentially hire them for full-time positions.

Most internships are unpaid and many students cannot participate due to the economic stress such an experience would create.

With help from the IU Foundation’s Parents Fund, the Career Development Center is offering summer internship housing grants of up to $1,500 for qualified students for the
first time.

“We thought this was a way to help students to take advantage of these opportunities,” said Dean of Students Pete Goldsmith, who approved the funding along with the Parents Association Advisory Board.

Students who have an unpaid summer internship of at least 32 hours per week at least 100 miles away from their permanent or Bloomington address, meet academic requirements and qualify for a Pell Grant are eligible to apply. The application is on the center’s website, and the deadline is April 15. 

Patrick Donahue, director of the Career Development Center and Arts & Sciences Career Services, said the grants are an attempt to solve “an access issue” for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Donahue said the benefits of internships are enormous, even though the cost of housing for popular internship programs in cities like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., can be steep.

Though Donahue said the grant will most likely not cover students’ entire housing costs for the summer, it will “at least give them a starting point.”

He added that the Center can also help students get acclimated to their summer city and look for part-time jobs because there aren’t many other funding opportunities available.

Though the Center has $50,000 to fund the grants, if each student receives the maximum $1,500 grant, only 33 students will be able to take advantage of the program.

Donahue said the Center will try to distribute the money as evenly as possible this year, so the allocation given to selected students depends on the number of students who apply and the cost of housing in the applicant’s internship city.

“This is in some ways going to be a test,” Donahue said. He added that the Center will be better able to gauge need in future years.

Donahue also said the program’s future is unknown, but he is hoping for additional funds to be able to continue the program.

“I think that could be a larger conversation that campus could have at some point,” he said.

He said he thinks the Center would need at least $250,000 a year to run the program consistently to address student need.

“I hope it’s the start of something bigger,” Donahue said.