The Department of Women's Studies offers a variety of challenging internship opportunities. Internships allow undergraduate and graduate students to earn academic credit for fieldwork experience. Students intern eight to 10 hours a week during an academic quarter, receive training and orientation from the agency and work under the supervision of agency staff.

Internship placements are offered at various local agencies, but students are also encouraged to develop individually tailored internships with assistance from the department.

Our students have completed internships in the local area with: Planned Parenthood, Women Helping Women, the League of Women Voters, the UC Women's Center, the National Organization for Women (NOW), Crazy Ladies Bookstore, Northern Kentucky Legal Aid Society, the Women's Prison Project and the YWCA. Other local area and campus organizations committed to women's issues are listed in Resources.

Students also have access to members of the Friends of Women's Studies, one of the oldest and largest community groups in support of Women's Studies in the country, who can serve as mentors and advisers for developing internships and career planning.

The department will also assist students in finding an internship site outside of Cincinnati and even abroad. For students interested in interning in Washington, D.C., the Washington Center is a great resource for interns. The Washington Center offers a number of internship programs and academic seminars including the Women in Public Policy Internship Program. As a student in the WIPP program, you are afforded the opportunity to intern at a number of exciting governmental, private sector and non-profit agencies in the D.C. area. You also participate in a weekly course on women and public policy and attend a number of guest lectures by prominent members of the D.C. community. WIPP interns receive college credit as well as some scholarship funding. If you're interested in the WIPP program, check out their Web site at http://www.twc.edu.

Full semester externships in places like the National Women's Law Center in Washington, D.C., may be pursued by our MA/JD students in the fall semester of their fourth year of study. Financial support for these externships is available through the College of Law for joint degree students wishing to have this clinical experience.

Fellowships are also available to support graduate students doing internships during the summer(s) before they graduate. Undergraduate and graduate students may also apply for annually for Friends-sponsored mini-grants which support community-based research projects that may arise from internships or coursework.

Students may also earn internship/independent study credit by assisting Women's Studies faculty on research projects.

All students wishing to pursue an internship or externship, or gain independent study fieldwork/research credit, must meet with the Undergraduate Director, Graduate Director or Department Head at least one month before the quarter in which they plan to be an intern or extern or do independent study..

More information is available on the Internships program through A&S Internship and the Professional Practice office.

To learn more about service-learning/experiential education in Women's Studies and to obtain lists of internship opportunities in Women's Studies nationally and internationally, consult the following resources (which you may peruse in the department):

The Practice of Change: Concepts and Models for Service Learning in Women's Studies, edited by Barbara J. Balliet and Kerrissa Heffernan (American Association for Higher Education, 2000).

Teaching Feminist Activism: Strategies from the Field, edited by Nancy A. Naples and Karen Bojar (Routledge, 2002).

Women's Voices in Experiential Education, edited by Karen Warren (Association for Experiential Education, Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1996).