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Alliance for Sustainable Communities

Lehigh Valley PA

Home / Act Locally / Internships with the Alliance / Internship Structure & Expectations

Internship Structure & Expectations

Rethink the System, Work for Change

Alliance internships offer an experience that is about working for change and building your understanding of sustainability. (Not routine office work.) While our internships all share some characteristics, there can be considerable variation in how they work.

They all share a broad concept of sustainability, community involvement, and a focus on both process and content—and because sustainability has many interdependent facets, most internships work at both a detail and big-picture level. Alliance internships generally involve a combination of research, analyzing existing policy & developing new or revised policy, meeting with community collaborators, and developing informative materials and presentations to engage the public and raise awareness of the need for change. Alliance internships sometimes involve presenting controversial issues or positions.

(Interns are also expected to support or assist with other Alliance projects when time permits.)

Collaboration & the Sustainability Commons – Many internships connect with existing projects where people are already working towards a related goal. In addition to regular meetings, many of these initiatives involve the Sustainability Commons, an online platform for collaboration. Interns are expected to participate in the appropriate online communities by offering ideas, commenting on ideas that others post, and helping develop good implementation strategies. Whether online or in the community, collaborative work depends on each participant contributing as much as possible—and sharing it with others as soon as possible—so the final product builds on everyone’s ideas and efforts.

Internships and Academic Credit – Experience is one of the primary ways people learn, but a good internship builds on and complements classroom studies: (1) it provides an opportunity for students to apply and interpret their classroom learning in real-world situations; and (2) it helps students develop their ability to learn from the practical problems they encounter, where learning objectives and process are not pre-structured for them.

At the same time, interns are expected to reflect on their experience, to relate it to their academic experience and career or job goals. Your internship is an opportunity to explore how your interests and goals intersect with issues and public policy, to develop and practice communication skills, and to formulate questions about your work and the project—including questions and ideas about how the project itself could be more effective and about the moral & philosophical issues involved. Interns are expected to incorporate these elements into their work.

Each college has its own specific requirements, but all interns are expected to average 10–12 hours per week, including a substantial amount of independent work. (Because some of the work is independent, students sometimes assume they can get by with only a few hours per week, but failing to put in the needed time can result in an intern being terminated before the semester is over.)

Types of Internships

Depending on what’s happening — or needs to happen — in the community, an internship can be exploratory or it can be tied to a very specific result needed at a particular time. The schedule, structure, and expectations are all tied to the purpose, so there is a lot of variation in the schedule and the amount of independence required. Although they share many features, it may help to think of each internship as tending to fit into 1 of 3 general types, although some individual internships are hybrids that combine aspects of more than one type:

Internships that focus on a type of work (such as writing or design)

Communication (Writing or Graphic Design) interns focus on developing ways to reach or engage specific audiences using printed materials, presentations, posters, face-to-face contacts, and/or online content and may involve organizing or participating in community events. Communication interns do not just work with others’ content; they usually are active participants in the process of developing facts and goals. They may also assist other interns or community partners.

Internships that focus on a topic (such as air pollution, food, or health)

Starting in January 2022, we are restructuring our issue-focused internships now take an even more holistic approach — many of these will be framed in terms of their relationship to Climate Action.

Some internships focus primarily on a specific  area of concern. (For example: Campus Sustainability, Climate & Sustainability in Schools, Law Enforcement & the Justice System, FairTrade, Healthy Food for Healthy Communities, Public Health, and Sustainability & Business.) These internships usually offer considerable flexibility in choosing & developing a specific focus, but may also involve working in partnership with other Alliance working groups or with one or more other organizations in the community — in which case  collaboration becomes more important than individual flexibility.

These internships can involve intensive writing to present the content that is developed, because each internship focuses on producing a tangible output that will help move the long-term goal forward. For example, the public health field involves many different areas of concern, but a given internship will usually focus on raising awareness about, and creating action on, a specific area such as food or air quality or endocrine disruptors. They can involve various types of activism, ranging from a report or presentation making recommendations to active discussion with people being asked to implement recommendations. [See reports, posters, and articles by previous interns.]

Internships with a Project Orientation (1)

The Editing & Publishing internship for the annual Sustainable Lehigh Valley booklet is a project-based internship, where the project goal has already been defined and requires a tight schedule & very specific output requirements, but includes many opportunities for creativity & independent work. The schedule can very intense, but most of the detail work is completed well before the semester ends. (Currently offered only in the spring semester.)

Internships with a Project Orientation (2)

Some internships, such as Campus Sustainability, and Action for Change / Put Your Values to Work are in a class by themselves, because they involve taking broad responsibility for analyzing an issue, planning, organizing, and creating results. This requires independent thinking, above-average time-management skills, the ability to formulate and communicate goals & objectives effectively; and the ability to engage with a variety of people and groups on multiple aspects of sustainability.

‘Independent Study’ projects

Some projects may be set up as an independent study, rather than an internship. Because most Alliance internships involve a significant amount of independent work, the differences are not always obvious. In general, an independent study has a somewhat higher expectation for the student to work on their own, with the Alliance acting as a coach or advisor, while an internship might involve closer supervision.

[Updated December 2021]