Past Opportunities

CESS-Munk Summer School in Experimental Social Sciences

The Nuffield College Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) at the University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, is pleased to announce the second year of the CESS-Munk Summer School in Experimental Social Sciences. The summer school offers content, and has a format, that resembles the highly successful Summer School in Experimental Social Sciences that CESS currently offers at Oxford in collaboration with the Essex Methods Summer School. The two-week curriculum is designed to provide students with all of the tools necessary to design and implement experiments along with the skills for analyzing and interpreting experimental results. The CESS-Munk Summer School in Experimental Social Sciences has assembled a group of world-class instructors to teach the different facets of experimental methods. Classes take place, and students will be housed, on the campus of the University of Toronto, situated in the centre of one of the great North American cities. The course will take place 19 May to 29 May 2015.

Further details are available here: http://cess-web.nuff.ox.ac.uk/cess-munk-2015/

The Privacy Tools Project Internship at Harvard

Spend Summer 2015 at Harvard performing cutting-edge research on data privacy. The Privacy Tools Project (http://privacytools.seas.harvard.edu/) is looking for summer students in Computer Science, Statistics, Government, Mathematics, Law, and Social Sciences with Quantitative Experience, particularly those with an interest in learning about or working on Data Privacy. We are working on ways for scientists to share research data for producing replicable, open science, without compromising the privacy of the individual research subjects whose data is used. Students last summer wrote or contributed to publishable research papers in this fast-moving field, and we expect the same this year. The work across the different projects includes elements such as:

Theory: proving mathematical theorems about what is achievable in the framework of “differential privacy,” which is a very active area of research in theoretical computer science and other fields,
Experimental algorithms: implementing, optimizing, and testing algorithms that perform useful data analysis tasks and satisfy “differential privacy” or other privacy metrics,
Empirical research: surveying social science datasets and analysis methods to determine the fit with different privacy technologies,
Software development: including for statistics, user interfaces, and data visualization.
Programming languages and computer security: design and implement programming language tools to ensure differential privacy and combine it with other computer security models.
Law: develop legal instruments and policy recommendations that complement new privacy-preserving technologies.
Interdisciplinary interaction: collaborating with computer scientists, social scientists, lawyers, and statisticians.

Useful background includes any of the following:

Theoretical computer science, especially algorithms
Data science, e.g. statistics and/or machine learning
Programming (in R, Java, Scala, Python, Javascript, or D3)
Quantitative analysis of social science data, especially regression (“least squares”, or OLS)
User interfaces and user experience testing
Programming language design and implementation
Law, especially privacy law

Virginia Governor’s Fellows

VA Governor’s Fellows application is now open: https://governor.virginia.gov/the-administration/governors-fellows-program/

Eligibility Requirements (Please note change in eligibility for rising college seniors):

Qualified applicants must be rising college seniors, graduating college seniors or enrolled as degree candidates in a graduate or professional school. Applicants must be enrolled in a Virginia college or university or must be a Virginia resident if enrolled in an out-of-state institution. They must also have a demonstrated commitment to excellence in academics, proven leadership ability, and involvement in extracurricular activities and community service. The selection of Fellows will be based solely on merit, without regard to race, sex, national origin, religion, age, disability, or political affiliation.

Program Details

Fellows will be required to work full-time in Virginia state government. The 2015 program dates are Monday, June 1 through Friday, July 31.

Assignments

Participants are placed in different positions in the Governor’s Office and in various agencies throughout the Executive Branch. The program attempts to match Fellows with compatible assignments according to background, interests and future goals.

Deadline is March 1st.

Hanover Research Internship Opportunity

Hanover Research is a global information services firm providing knowledge support to both for-profit and non-profit organizations. Through our unique, fixed-cost model we provide customized, timely, and authoritative research and advice enabling our clients to make informed decisions, identify and seize opportunities, and heighten their effectiveness. Hanover provides work across a number of non-profit practice areas, including K-12, Higher Education, and Healthcare. Additionally, our Market Insight Center provides cross-industry research and analysis to B2B and B2C companies.

All that to say that, basically, we do custom research in the education (Higher Ed institutions and K-12 districts) and business sectors (what we call our Market Insight Center). We’ve found that people with a social sciences background do very well at Hanover. This is also a good place for people who want to take a year or two to work before applying to grad school.

Hanover Interns work on real projects, just like junior researchers. They don’t do any filing or coffee-making (other than for themselves)!

Survey Research Intern: http://hanoverresearchcareers.catsone.com/careers/index.php?m=portal&a=details&jobOrderID=4552169

Research Intern: http://hanoverresearchcareers.catsone.com/careers/index.php?m=portal&a=details&jobOrderID=4544254

If you have questions, contact Sarah Knoesen at sknoesen@hanoverresearch.com.

Democratic National Committee Internship Opportunity

The Department of Technology at the Democratic National Committee is recruiting interns to work on a variety of data analysis and engineering projects at our headquarters in DC. This is a great opportunity for current students or recent grads with a variety of methodological backgrounds (e.g., statistics, surveys, experimental research, programming) to get hands-on experience doing applied political research. The specific tasks our interns work on depend upon their particular strengths and interests, but all of our interns work directly with Tech staff on key projects and get to routinely use and grow their skills.

Recent projects our interns have worked on include: • analyzing field experiments from the 2012 Obama campaign • recoding survey data for use in microtargeting models • analyzing campaign contact patterns • designing original surveys and experiments • programming scripts for analyzing text and images from Twitter Though the internship is unpaid, we make a point of providing our interns with practical experience and technical skills that will be highly valuable for future employment or grad school—this isn’t a “fetching-coffee-and-making-copies” sort of internship. And for those who want to continue working in political tech and data, there’s really no better place to break into the industry (especially with the 2016 campaign coming up quickly!). More details about the position and instructions about how to apply can be found here: http://my.democrats.org/page/s/dnc-technology-internship

Scholarships and Internship Funds for Government Majors

Important funding information for students interning over the summer. The Charles Center has many scholarships available designed for students undertaking summer internships related to politics, government, and public affairs. There is a short application due April 24, 2015.

For more information and the application, follow the link below. http://www.wm.edu/sites/scholarships/scholarshipsfellowshipsawards/summer/irwinmemorial/index.php

Honors Fellowship Kickstarter

Interested in helping to fund a W&M Honor’s Thesis Project? Check out the “kickstarter” site, http://honorsfellowships.wm.edu/ to donate now! Last year 45 honors students received full summer grants thanks to gifts over this site; if we had been limited to internal money alone, we would have been able to award just 6 Honors Fellowships. We have 70 students on the site this year and, as you’ll see on the site, 9 of these are already fully funded and many others have a great start. Every dollar that students receive, whether it’s a full Fellowship or just $200, goes directly to the intended student for project related expenses.

Cohen Career Center Internship Fund

Application Deadline: April 15, 2015, no later than 11:59 PM. Please note: no applications will be accepted after the deadline!

The Cohen Career Center Internship Fund exists thanks to kind donations from the Parents & Family Council, the Vice President of Student Affairs, parents, and other donors. The fund awards $4,000 to undergraduate students pursuing necessarily unpaid internships. Internships deemed “necessarily unpaid” are offered by employers that genuinely lack the financial resources to pay wages to their interns and typically fall within the following sectors: non-profit, government, education, and non-governmental organizations. Opportunities at boutique, for-profit, media/communications, or entrepreneurially-oriented organizations may be considered if justification is provided regarding why the internship is unpaid.

To be eligible, applicants must be returning to the college after the completion of the internship, i.e. a rising sophomore, junior, or senior. May or August 2015 grads are not eligible.To apply for the funding, the student must secure an unpaid internship that is a minimum of 160 hours, worked at one organization, over at least four weeks. The minimum required hours must be completed between the dates of June 1-August 7, 2015 though an internship may continue beyond August 1st. An applicant cannot use multiple internship offers to meet the duration and hourly requirements.

To apply, a student must submit the following 4 documents. Keep in mind that the application process is competitive and all application materials should be well-written.

Statement of interest (no more than 800 words total) addressing the following points:
- What is the connection between this internship and your career goals? How do you hope to benefit from the internship?
- In what way would funding help better enable you to pursue an internship? If relevant, outline any costs you anticipate incurring as a result of the internship.
- List any other sources of funding that you have applied for and/or received whether from either William & Mary or external sources. Please note the amount of the funding and when you anticipate hearing about whether you will receive it.
Up-to-date resume
Internship posting or position description
Proof of the internship opportunity, i.e. offer letter or email, written in English, which outlines employer’s contact information, confirms that the internship has been offered and accepted, lists the start and end dates for the internship, the total number of hours to be worked, and that it is unpaid. The employer also must complete this verification form regarding the Fair Labor and Standards Act.

Application materials must be submitted via Tribe Careers. To apply, log onto your Tribe Careers account and find further instructions on the Tribe Careers homepage. Internship credit: https://www.wm.edu/as/undergraduate/forms/InternshipAcademicCredit.pdf

Scholarships through William & Mary Government Department

These scholarships are award by the Government Department and are available to current students. For information, please visit: http://www.wm.edu/as/government/currentstudents/awardsgov/index.php

2015 Ron Paul Scholarships

To be eligible for these scholarships you must be an undergraduate student, or a soon to be undergraduate student, who is passionate about liberty. Students from all majors are encouraged to apply. Our goal with this program is to carry on the legacy of former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul.

Last year we awarded 4 scholarships in the amounts of: $10,000, $5,000, $2,500, and $1,000. We hope to do the same this year. The deadline to apply is March 23, 2015.

You can learn more here: http://www.campaignforlibertyfoundation.org/how-to-apply/