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The department offers several internship opportunities to meet the interests of all the undergraduates.
The Peter R. Gould Center for Geography Education and Outreach
Responsibilities include assisting theDepartment of Geography Webmaster in collecting, creating, and publishing news and stories on the Department of Geography Web site, or helping the campus cartographer to maintain and publish the official University Park campus map via print publications and on-line Campus Maps.
Undergraduate students who demonstrate verbal communication and Web publishing skills, as well as graphic design talent will be considered. One internship is available annually. A minimum of twelve hours of effort per week is expected.
For more information:
Contact: Jennifer Driver
E-mail: jld345@psu.edu
Web site:http://www.gouldcenter.psu.edu
The National Geographic Society offers internships throughout the year designed for geography and cartography majors enrolled in their junior or senior year of college or in a master’s program. The Penn State Department of Geography has a rich history with the NGS Internship Program. Past Penn State interns have worked in the Cartographic, Geography Education, Research, and Web site Divisions of the Society. Download a pdf version of the 2006 NGS Geography Intern Program application guidelines and the application cover form. Please be advised that you must apply for this internship through the Department of Geography. Do not send application materials directly to the National Geographic Society.
For more information:
Contact: Jodi Vender, Coordinator of Undergraduate Advising and Alumni Relations
Office: 305 Walker Building
Phone: (814) 863-5730
E-mail: jvender@psu.edu
or
Contact: Brent Yarnal, Professor of Geography
Office: 320 Earth & Engineering Science Building
Phone: (814) 865-8190
E-mail: alibar@essc.psu.edu
Planning and Zoning Internship
Ferguson Township, Centre County is in search of an intern to work in its Planning and Zoning Department. The intern's primary duty will be collecting data and entering it in the Township's GIS and Zoning Permit Package. The intern will also assist with various tasks for the Planning and Zoning and Public Works Department. This position requires experience with the use of ArcGIS, Microsoft Word and Excel. Experience with Microsoft Access is a plus. Use of a GPS unit is also necessary for data collection. A valid PA Drivers License is required. The hours are flexible (up to 10 hours/week) during the spring and fall semester and full time (forty hours/week) during the summer months. The salary is $8.50/hr. Ferguson Township is an Equal Opportunity Employer. If you are interested in this challenging position, please submit a Township Application to the Township's Director of Planning and Zoning at Ferguson Township, 3147 Research Drive, State College, PA 16801.
For more information:
View the Planning and Zoning Internship Description
Contact: Trisha Lang, Director of Planning and Zoning
Phone: (814) 238-4651
E-mail: info@twp.ferguson.pa.us
Web site: http://www.twp.ferguson.pa.us/
RFF 2006 Summer Internship Program
Resources for the Future (RFF), an independent nonprofit organization specializing in research, policy analysis, and public education on environmental, energy, and natural resource issues, has several paid summer internships for outstanding undergraduate and graduate students. Internships are available beginning in June and ending in late August for a ten-week assignment.
For more information:
View the RFF 2006 Summer Internship Program Announcement
Contact: Marilyn M. Voigt, Program Associate
Phone: (202) 328-5077
E-mail: voigt@rff.org
Web site: http://www.rff.org/
Centre County Planning Office
The Centre County Planning Office has internships available for GIS work using Arc/INFO. Some prior experience in GIS course work (not necessarily in Arc/INFO) is required. The internship will involve 10-20 hours of work per week, negotiable. A single block of work should be at least three hours long.
In addition to our need for people with GIS backgrounds (the more experience, the better), we need people to analyze demographic information and prepare publications covering the county, its regions, and the municipalities. Students will also gain exposure to land planning and zoning activities.
For more information:
Contact: Robert B. Jacobs, Director
Phone: 814-355-6791
Fax: 814-355-8661
Web site: www.co.centre.pa.us
Vegetation Dynamics Laboratory
Dr. Alan Taylor, Professor of Geography, offers research opportunities and internships to undergraduates through the Vegetation Dynamics Laboratory. These are offered in the context of his research program on the influence of people, climate, and fire regimes on western forest dynamics, especially those in California.
Dr. Taylor offers several types of opportunities: 1) field opportunities where undergraduate students participate in field work; 2) lab opportunities where undergraduates work in a laboratory setting.
In the field, students learn how to use a variety of measuring instruments and they work in teams to collect data on forest ecosystem structure. In the lab, students work on sample preparation and sample measurement, data summarization, and some analysis depending on their skills and interests.
Over sixty geography undergraduates have participated in this program. All travel and living costs are covered for field experiences and lab students are payed wages or use the experience to earn credit if they have a focused interest. Some students are also hired directly by my federal sponsors to conduct field work under his direction.
Since 1995 undergraduate students have accompanied him to: 1) Lassen Volcanic National Park; 2) Thousand Lakes Wilderness; 3) Cub Creek Research Natural Area; 4) Lake Tahoe Basin; 5) Chiricahua National Monument; and 6) Yosemite National Park. In Summer 2003, six undergraduates accompanied Dr. Taylor and his research team to Yosemite National Park and Guadalupe Mountains National Park on field campaigns.
For more information:
Contact: Dr. Alan Taylor, Professor of Geography
E-mail: aht1@psu.edu
Web site: www.geog.psu.edu/vegdyn/index.html
Center for Integrated Regional Assessment
Internship, employment, and independent studies opportunities exist for undergraduate students to conduct human-environment research through the Center for Integrated Regional Assessment and affiliated research projects. Students apply a variety of socioeconomic, biophysical, and technical skills to such problems as:
Competitive opportunities exist for exceptional students through the Human-Environment Regional Observatory (HERO) Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site held each summer. HERO is developing concepts and tools for studying the local dimensions of global environmental change. The HERO REU Site introduces students to those methods by helping them carry out local-area, collaborative research in four sites across the United States.
Twelve students—three each from Arizona, Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts—participated in the first HERO REU Site in 2002. The students started their activities with a two-week short course at Penn State. Among the many daily training activities, students conducted interviews, worked with satellite imagery and GIS data, and manipulated, analyzed, and stored complex human-environment information. There were three field trips, including one in which students prepared the itinerary and delivered site presentations to their mentors.
Students returned to their home states after the short course, where they spent six weeks assessing the vulnerability of their locales to environmental hazards. Critical to their work was the cross-site collaboration made possible by HERO collaboratory tools. Students held Web-based videoconferences nearly every day as they worked with their colleagues across the country.
For more information:
Contact Brent Yarnal, Director
E-mail: alibar@essc.psu.edu
Web site: http://www.cira.psu.edu/
The Philadelphia Field Project
This undergraduate service-learning opportunity is available to students in the Schreyer Honors College, holders of Bunton-Waller fellowships, and Mitte Scholars of the College of Business Administration at Penn State.
An Alternative Approach to Poverty in the United States:
Poverty is often defined as an "economic" problem that can be corrected through more jobs and higher incomes; however, history shows that such "solutions" have offered little help to the long term resolution of the problem. Instead of asking why households do not make more income, suppose we ask the substantive question of why poor households have problems with adequate nutrition, housing, transport, health care, and so on.
Instead of focusing on income and poverty, we will take an interdisciplinary substantive approach by asking why specific people in particular places spend what they do on meeting basic needs in the hope of finding less expensive, technically more benign, and ecologically less destructive ways of satisfying those needs. The university has the capacity to develop a new discourse that could re-valorize the inner city by focusing on urban gardening, urban architecture, rebuilding homes with local effort, alternative modes of transport, "telecommuting" instead of physical commuting, creative ways of making safe neighborhoods, and so on. We wish to draw on the disciplinary expertise of undergraduates to build such a program of research, learning, and service at Penn State.
Advantages for students:
For more information:
Contact Dr. Lakshman Yapa, Professor of Geography
E-mail: lxy3@psu.edu
Web site: http://www.geog.psu.edu/phila/
Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs (DMVA)
The Army recognizes that military training affects the environment. As such, all activities, including training, must be environmentally sustainable and meet current needs without compromising the integrity of the environment for future generations. The Army's Integrated Training Area Management (ITAM) program was established to achieve optimum, sustainable use of training lands, through a program that includes inventorying and monitoring land conditions, integrating training requirements with land carrying capacity, educating land users to minimize adverse impacts, and providing for land rehabilitation and maintenance.
For more information:
Contact Dr. Todd Bacastow
E-mail: bacastow@essc.psu.edu
In addition to these opportunities, many local, state, and national organizations, businesses, and governmental agencies offer internships and summer employment. Access the job resources Web page to view more opportunities.