Graduate/Undergraduate Internships
DEADLINE EXTENDED TO SUNDAY, Feb. 27th!
Applications for Summer 2022 Internships Now Open!
About the Internships:
The Diluvial Houston Initiative, an Andrew W. Mellon foundation project, is offering summer internshipsthrough three Houston environmental non-profit organizations for the summer.
These internships will be fully paid (time commitments may vary based on intern/provider needs for about 10 weeks). Interns will receive $15 an hour and be expected to work 30 hours a week. Internships are open to interested undergraduate and graduate students.
Selection process:
Those interested should submit a resume (no more than 2 pages), and cover letter (1 page) to Weston Twardowski (westont@rice.edu) by SUNDAY, February 27th. Cover letters and resumes should be targeted for any of the organizational partners (do not specify an organization you wish to work with on your cover letter). In submission emails to Weston Twardowski, applicants may indicate a ranked preference in organizational partners or “no preference between the organizations.”
Finalist candidates (3-5 for each position) will be interviewed by the non-profit organizations. Further details of exact responsibilities and time commitments will be discussed at these interviews.
Interns will be placed at one of three partner institutions: Air Alliance Houston, Bayou City Waterkeeper, or Citizen’s Environmental Coalition.
Eligibility:
This opportunity is open to students who are pursuing a major, minor, or graduate degree in any humanities discipline including the arts, architecture, or environmental studies, and the interpretive social sciences (e.g.- anthropology and sociology). Applicants must be in good academic standing and conform to Rice University policy.
About the Organizations/Positions:
Air Alliance is looking for interns who have interests in community engagement and outreach, with a particular focus on those interested in health and recognizing overlapping difficulties facing environmental justice communities. Projects might include community outreach initiatives; researching port communities/different global ports and how these ports have mitigated environmental harms—interns might have the opportunity to present these findings to port commissioners; working with the new EJ legal lab at Air Alliance in a research capacity.
Bayou City Waterkeeper is looking for interns who fit into one of two tracks. The first is for a Creative Communications Intern. This person would assist with the rebranding of Bayou City Waterkeeper and develop new communications initiatives. Tasks might include: website design and maintenance; graphic design; writing blog posts; interviewing community members; running social media; developing a podcast. The second track is for an Advocacy and Policy Intern. This position would allow the intern to learn about non-profit management; directly assist in designing the new policy agenda for the organization; research policy case studies and perform data analysis; perform developmental research and write grants.
Citizens’ Environmental Coalition
The main task for the intern will be in helping to organize the Greater Houston Environmental Summit (normally held in August in September). This may be an in-person or virtual (or hybrid) event. Other projects might include assisting with the Environmental Resource Guide or Houston Environmental Resources for Educators website, as well as assisting on communication and outreach plans.
Previous Internships
Summer 2021
Sarah Swackhamer, Undergraduate Student Intern
Brooke Clarke, Graduate Student Intern
Brooke recently finished her fourth-year as a PhD candidate in the Department of English where she uses theories of ecology to question and analyze literary narratives. In her work, ecology is a mode of reading that attends to how impressionistic literary devices, such as voice, tone, and rhythm, operate collectively in a text and are not easily extractable or definable from one another. Her dissertation, "In the Mood: Ambiences of Sexuality and Temporality in Modernist Fiction, 1895-1945," studies literary ambience in British and American modernist fiction with particular attention to the literature’s experimental stylings of sexuality and temporality.