This summer, many Trinity students will stay on campus to participate in a variety of different research and internship programs. These students will receive on-campus housing, a stipend and an opportunity to work or to do research.
Several funding sources are available for students who want to conduct summer research. Many of these sources focus on supporting students who participate in STEM research. However, the Mellon Initiative provides students interested in other disciplines with opportunities to conduct research in the arts and humanities.
“We focus on projects where faculty and students are working collaboratively on a project that is primarily the faculty’s project,” said Chad Spigel, director of the Mellon Initiative. “The Mellon Initiative at Trinity has been funded since the beginning by the Mellon Foundation. They got us started in 2013 with the program, and then in March of last year, they gave us another grant to continue the program.”
Last summer, 21 students conducted research through the Mellon Initiative. Spigel expects around the same number of participants this summer.
“The numbers are often flexible, it all depends on how many students, and we often partner with the McNair program, where they support part of it and we support the other part of it so we share the funding,” Spigel said. “It’s somewhere between 17 and 21 students that we can support this summer.”
The application for the Mellon undergraduate summer research fellowships is open now and can be found on the Mellon Initiative’s Trinity website. The application deadline is Feb. 13.
In addition to research opportunities, there are also a few different Trinity programs that pair students with internship opportunities at organizations around San Antonio.
“For this summer, the primary Trinity-sponsored programs are the Arts, Letters, and Enterprise (ALE) program, Mexico, the Americas, and Spain (MAS), and Students + Startups,” said Erin Hood, assistant director of Experiential Learning.
The ALE program provides students with a range of internship positions in the arts, humanities, social sciences and STEM fields.
“We’ve got between 22 and 25 organizations that will be involved this year,” said Carl Leafstedt, co-chair of the ALE program. “This is a great opportunity to get $4,000, live on campus and do something that’s meaningful to your major and your interests. It’s slightly expanded. We’re hoping to offer more this year than we have in the past. The program has grown in every year over the last four years.”
Last summer, over 150 students expressed interest in the ALE internship program and 120 students submitted completed applications. Leafstedt expects the number of applicants to grow this year. Applications for the program are due on Feb. 4.
The largest internship program at Trinity is Students + Startups, which expanded its reach this year to accept students from schools other than Trinity. The deadline to apply for Students + Startups was Jan. 13 before it was extended to Jan. 20. According to Martinez, over 250 students applied to the program, approximately half of whom are Trinity students.
“We’ve got lots of interest from lots of places,” said Luis Martinez, originator and director of Students + Startups. “Trinity has heavy interest, we have interest from our local universities here. We’ve had some phenomenal interest from schools in the state of Texas, and we’ve been thrilled to get applications from Johns Hopkins and Columbia and Brown. We’re super excited to see them coming in from these different schools on Handshake. We’re looking at a target of between 80 and 100 intern positions.”
Aside from the three main internship programs, there is another internship opportunity run through Trinity’s endowment office. Information about this internship position can be found on Handshake.
“It’s an endowment analyst internship,” Hood said. “It’s a single internship, and it’s a really fantastic opportunity for students interested in working in investments. [The internship] is every summer and there’s the possibility of extending it through the academic year.”
Martinez also mentioned some things that he believes are useful for students who apply to any internship program.
“I think it’s really important when students are applying to an internship program to be aware of deadlines. Always getting your application in earlier is more advantageous,” Martinez said. “You should really utilize the great people and the great resources that we have here at Career Services. Waiting until the last moment to engage them is really hard on them because they want to be of service, but if it’s due tomorrow, they can’t do as much with you as they can if they know that it’s due in a month.”
More information about summer research opportunities can be found on Trinity’s undergraduate research web page and more information about summer internship programs can be found on Trinity’s student internship information web page.
