Looking for internship funding? Want to intern with an organization you’re passionate about and work on a project that jives with your academic and professional interests? Pitch your idea to UChicagoGRAD. We invite proposals twice each year, with deadlines on February 28 for Summer internships and July 20 for academic-year internships (PhD students only). Unsure when to apply? Review the infographic below. Want more information on the application process? Scroll through the program details below.
The Program
UChicagoGRAD’s GRAD Global Impact (GGI) Pitch program funds a limited number of UChicago graduate students to spend their summers in self-devised internships with host organizations of their choice. Since its inception in 2015, the program has facilitated over hundreds of internships in Chicago and around the world.
Pitch your own Internship
Each year, students are invited to submit proposals for 250-hour summer internships with nonprofits, university entities, or small startups that are otherwise unable to pay interns. Students should work with these organizations to collaboratively design internship projects that have a meaningful impact on the organization and the student’s career. Selected students then receive $6,000 stipends to complete the internships they pitched.
Internships can take one of two forms:
- Students collaborate with host organizations to develop project-based internships tailor-made for a student’s interests and goals. (This is the preferred internship form.)
- Students apply to receive funding for pre-existing, unpaid internships with eligible organizations. (Note: We realize that interview and offer schedules for pre-existing internships may not align with the GGI timeline. In such cases, selected students will be awarded “conditional” funding, meaning that UChicagoGRAD will agree to fund them if they are selected.)
The GGI internship program gives preference/priority to applicants who design project-based internships. Project-based internships are defined by coherent sets of responsibilities that achieve specific deliverables or outcomes. Internships that involve unrelated, ad-hoc tasks, on the other hand, do not count as project-based opportunities. For more information, students are encouraged to attend the information session hosted before each deadline (refer to dates).
Please note that research assistant opportunities are not considered internships for the purpose of the GGI Internship Program.
Application Deadlines
Applications are due February 28 for summer opportunities (all students) or July 20 for academic-year opportunities (PhD students only). Students may only submit a proposal for one internship. The award is not transferable to another internship.
Hours & Timing
GGI internships must be a minimum of 250 hours in duration, and Summer internships should take place during Summer Quarter. The student and organization can work together to determine the exact number of hours per week and the exact weeks in which the internship will occur.
The Process
Submission
Applicants should first choose an organization with which they would like to intern and make contact as soon as possible. Then, applicants should work their potential host to develop a project that complements the student’s academic research and career goals. Applicants then submit a written proposal (in the form of an application letter), a resume or CV, and host confirmation of the internship to UChicagoGRAD.
UChicagoGRAD career advisors are available to answer questions before and during the application process.
Offers and Confirmation
A selection committee will assess applications and select awardees. Awardees will then be notified, and UChicagoGRAD will verify the project details with host organizations. We will also contact research advisors (for late-year PhD students), Directors of Graduate Studies (for early-year PhD students), or Deans of Students (for Master’s students) to confirm that awardees are in good academic standing. See the “GGI Pitch Dates” section below for a full timeline.
Other Programming & Requirements
All recipients will attend a prep session. Following the conclusion of their internship, recipients will also be required to respond to a survey. Finally, recipients may be asked to serve as mentors for the following year’s cohort of interns.
Non-Transferability of Award Funding
GGI Pitch funding is granted for the specific purpose of supporting the internship experience described during the selection process. While projects may change, students are not permitted to switch host organizations.
What We Look For
Applicants must submit an application letter, a resume or CV, and confirmation of the internship to UChicagoGRAD.
Resume/CV
In general, a traditional resume is preferred, but UChicagoGRAD will accept a CV if it is more appropriate for the internship you are proposing.
Cover Letter
Your two-page Application Letter should:
- Discuss your academic work and how it connects with your internship project
- Describe your host organization
- Describe in detail your internship project, including duties and timelines
- Discuss how your project will equip you with new skills and advance your career
- Describe the impact of the internship project on the host organization
Internship Confirmation
As part of your application, you must submit an email or letter from your host that confirms your internship project. This host confirmation can be a short note (such as an email) that includes your name, your supervisor’s name, and the internship project you would be pursuing.
You do not need to confirm your internship if you are applying for an existing internship that makes selections after the GGI Pitch deadline. In this case, please mention this in your application letter.
Eligibility
GGI Pitch candidates must be enrolled full-time in a degree-granting graduate program at UChicago at the time of application. This includes students who meet these criteria but will have graduated by the time they begin their internship. Both domestic and international students are eligible. A student may hold up to two GGI-funded internships during their time at UChicago.
Other Funding Sources
The GGI Pitch program provides some financial support for students who are participating in otherwise unpaid (or underpaid) opportunities. While you are encouraged to consider other potential funding sources to support your internship, UChicagoGRAD will only award a stipend that brings the total support for this experience up to $6000. This condition does not include regular student support that you may receive unrelated to this internship. It does apply to funds supplied directly by the host or by another granting unit, intended to support this experience. If the amount awarded from another source is less than $6000, UChicagoGRAD will award a stipend amount for the difference between these awards.
2023/24 GGI Pitch Academic Year Dates
May 23, 2023: Info session
- Email kranz@uchicago.edu for the slides
June 20, 2023: Applications open
- Search for “Pitch” or requisition “76264” in the “Jobs” section of GRAD Gargoyle to submit your materials.
July 20, 2023: Applications due
August 18, 2023: Conditional awards offered
- UChicagoGRAD will also confirm recipients’ good academic standing with their research advisor or Dean of Students as applicable and confirm individual project plans with host organizations.
September 8, 2023: Confirmation of awards
September 18, 2023: Stipends issued
Danette Gentile Kauffman GGI Internship
The Kauffman award is presented to outstanding GGI Pitch winners from the Humanities Division. The award is made possible by a generous donation from alumna Danette Gentile Kauffman (M.A. Humanities 1969). The award does not require a specialized application process; all GGI Pitch applicants from the Humanities Division are automatically be considered for this prize.
2020 Winner: Julia Rossi, Ph.D. student in English Language and Literature
With the support of Danette Gentile Kauffman, I will be completing an internship this year with The Odyssey Project – a free, college-credit earning humanities course for income-eligible adults with limited or no access to higher education. Due to the ongoing public health crisis, The Odyssey Project’s programming will take place online for most (if not all) of this year. My internship will be geared toward encouraging a sense of intellectual community for students and alumni during this difficult and isolating time. I will be responsible for planning, designing, and editing a publication to mark the 20th anniversary of The Odyssey Project, which will feature stories, poems, and essays written by current students and alumni. I am also excited to work directly with students as a tutor, helping them to improve their academic writing and to formulate their papers.
2019 Winner: David Hogue, Ph.D. student in East Asian Languages and Civilizations
With the support of Danette Gentile Kauffman, I interned at the Wuhan University Center of Bamboo and Silk Manuscripts, which operates an English-language academic journal that publishes leading research in the field of early Chinese excavated texts. In my internship, I have served as an academic linguist and editorial services support staff member, translating Chinese-language articles into English for publication in the Center’s peer-reviewed journal, “Bamboo and Silk.”
2018 Winner: Simone Levine, M.A. student in Humanities
“With the support of Danette Gentile Kauffman, my GGI internship provided me with the opportunity to be involved in an exhibition catalog published by the Smart Museum of Art. The catalog was published for the occasion of the exhibition The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China, curated by Professor Wu Hung with Orianna Cacchione. I wrote three artist profiles for the publication, for was credited as a contributor. My GGI Internship marked the first time I have undertaken comprehensive research and historical writing on contemporary Chinese art outside of my studies. Most importantly, the internship enabled me to begin making scholarly contributions in the art world, the field in which I plan to invest myself professionally.”
2018 Winner: Charlotte Saul, Ph.D. student in English Language and Literature
“With the support of Danette Gentile Kauffman, I completed a research-based curatorial internship at Chatsworth House, engaging specifically with the Devonshire Collection and its group of rare 17th-century court masque designs. Only half of the drawings’ catalog entries had been recently revised, so my task was to update the catalog entries for the remaining drawings, writing physical descriptions and critical narratives for each object. This internship gave me the opportunity to learn how to best work with a collections management system used by many institutions, and a chance to work directly with unique archival materials; as a student of literary and visual culture, this was a particularly meaningful experience.”
Phillip N. Norton GGI Internship
The Norton award is presented to an outstanding GGI Pitch winner from the Physical Sciences Division. The award is made possible by a generous donation from alumnus Phillip N. Norton (Ph.D. Statistics 1988). The award does not require a specialized application process; all GGI Pitch applicants from PSD are automatically be considered for this prize.
2021 Winner: George Bi, M.S. Student in Analytics
“Through the generous support of the Phillip N. Norton GGI internship, I spent my summer internship in China with Red Fuji, a company focusing on environmental-friendly raw materials house decoration, as a data scientist. Throughout the internship, I utilized my data science mindset to solve traditional business problem in the house decoration industry. By the end of the internship, I built a database for the company, a business visualization report for management board and an algorithm that clustered housing characteristics. I really appreciate this internship opportunity which helped me apply theoretical knowledge into practice and have a better understanding on how to be a better data scientist and which area I should focus more on.”
2020 Winner: Bowen Bao, M.S. Student in Computer Science
“With the support of the Phillip N. Norton GGI Internship, I spent my summer in the Department of Medicine in the Section of Computational Biomedicine and Biomedical Data Science. I helped develop Heart Clinical Guidelines, a web application meant to support doctors and biomedical researchers to search for guidelines and data supplements used in diagnosing cardiovascular disease, currently a manual process in the healthcare industry. I parsed PDF charts from XML to JSON and worked on a Node.js web application to make the guidelines searchable. The internship gave me a chance to dig deeper into algorithmic thinking and allowed me to learn new tools to do web development.”
2019 Winner: Matthew Shin, M.S. student in Computational and Applied Mathematics
“With the support of the Phillip N. Norton GGI Internship, I spent the summer abroad in England studying under Dr. Ruth Baker of the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford. The research group at the Wolfson Centre for Mathematical Biology probes modern problems in biology using techniques from applied mathematics. In particular, I considered methods from stochastic processes and statistical mechanics to model cell dynamics (such as stem cell migration) with simulations and PDEs. This opportunity provided me a unique and didactic introduction to the world of academic research, tailored to my particular interest in quantitative biological models. I come away from the experience with a greater understanding of the tools required and eagerness to tackle large scientific questions through mathematics.”
2018 Winner: Erin Lipman, M.S. student in Statistics
“Through the generous support of the Phillip N. Norton GGI internship, I spent my summer interning with Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) in San Francisco, CA. HRDAG is a non-profit organization that uses rigorous and objective statistical science to to investigate human rights abuses worldwide. At HRDAG I worked on issues of racial bias in the criminal justice system, in particular concerning the use of automated risk assessment systems for pretrial detention decisions. The experience was invaluable in building my data science skills and giving me a clear picture of my career path forward as a statistician concerned with issue of human rights and fairness.”
