Internships

The Patterson School encourages all students to consider internships and summer study workshops as a means to enhance their exposure to career opportunities, learn valuable skills, increase networking, and further develop their resumes.

The overwhelming majority of Patterson School students pursue internships and our program has an exceptional track record of landing highly competitive, prestigious positions. In fact, many students view their internship experience as one of the highlights of their graduate education; for some it opened the door to life-long career employment.

Recent Patterson School students interned at US diplomatic missions in Adana, Dakar, Guangzhou, The Hague, Paris, Rio de Janiero, Skopje, Vientiane and Vilnius; in Beijing at the UK Embassy and in Washington at the Kyrgyz Embassy; in the Canadian Parliament and with the Chilean government; with NGOs in Chile, Costa Rica, Haiti, Israel, Nicaragua, South Africa, Switzerland, Rwanda; with multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, International Organization for Migration, African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. In Summer 2016, Patterson School students will be in El Salvador, Germany, India, Jordan, Mongolia, Morocco, Qatar and South Sudan.

Students also undertook internships in Washington at the Departments of State, Commerce, Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security; as well as with Congress, USTR, OPIC GAO, and CIA. Equally popular are stints at think tanks like CSIS, the CATO Institute, or the Atlantic Council. Others students spread across the United States with business organizations (such as Alltech, Gulfstream Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, Sony, World Trade Centers), NGOs (Carter Center, Samaritan's Purse, Sister Cities, Kentucky Refugee Ministries, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Transparency International, Council of State Governments, Open Society Institute) and government.

Students seeking to improve their language abilities over the summer often attend Middlebury's summer language programs (four students are studying Arabic there in 2016), and the language centers at Arizona State, Indiana University and the University of Wisconsin; others studied overseas in venues as varied as China, Russia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, and Jordan.

Finding and landing the right internship can be a challenge. Accordingly, the discussion about how, why and where begins with the very first day of orientation (there will be a panel with returning students who will recount their experiences over the summer). This is followed by a series of brown bag lunch presentations in the fall, as well as scheduled formal meetings with faculty and staff about how to best apply for, and obtain, positions related to your major concentration. Internships with the State Department and in the intelligence community normally require a security clearance, necessitating very early application deadlines.

The links below are by no means exhaustive - there are literally thousands of potential opportunities, but they should provide a general sense of the potential range of possibilities and some idea of the expectations regarding applying and participating.

Internships

Quick Links

Contact Us