Internships

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Why Intern at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County?

If you are looking for a meaningful internship experience, think about joining us at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County. We want your work with us to be a great experience both for you and for the local community.

Our organization offers something different from most other internships, including other non-international opportunities:

• We have over 100 programs running across health, food systems, family, community development, energy, the environment, nutrition, agriculture, horticulture, 4-H and youth. That means you can take your interests in areas such as public health, the environment, social justice or sustainable food systems, and find an existing project to work with.
• Depending on the type of internship, you may have the freedom work alongside something we are already doing but design your own project to both serve the community’s needs, and to better fit your personal goals. We have staff who have experience teaching and supervising students from Cornell, Ithaca College, and TC3, and who can support you with your projects as your interests develop.
• Some interns find they arrive with an interest in one thing and through working with us and our various specialists, change or focus their direction, e.g., corporate law to environmental law.  Having the breadth of programming and expertise that we do—and most of it in one building—is a rare and valuable resource.
• We understand that many students want a set of clear responsibilities and timelines to organize their schedules.
• If you are thinking of joining us there are a variety of scholarships you can apply for, and you can also receive Federal Work-Study (if eligible).
• As interns or practicum students who live in the Ithaca area you can find out what is really going on, connect with and learn about the community’s strengths and assets, and work towards a sustainable solution to the challenges the community is facing. You can even stay involved and build on the project after you are “officially” finished. For example, supervised independent study for credit is one of many possibilities.
• If you feel your project is something you want to keep working on during your time in Ithaca then, depending on the program area, you may be able to apply for grants to support the work (and potentially pay yourself a salary!). If it is a project that fits our organization’s needs and will benefit our community then CCE-Tompkins will support those applications and help you write the grant.
• In your work you can draw on the incredible resources of Cornell, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Ithaca College and TC3. Do not underestimate how much you bring to the community table with your access to those.
• Some interns return to work for us after graduating, and that has all kinds of advantages both for you and us. Building out a project you worked on earlier (potentially with some kind of financial support) can be a very useful next step in the year or the summer following graduation. It can be a major plus on your resume for graduate school where you can show you have taken ownership of a major initiative of your own design.
• Remember that most graduates will end up living and working in the U.S. and so impressing potential employers with your domestic experience is vital. As part of this, there are also a variety of professional development opportunities available to you through us which we can discuss as we move forward.
• In working with CCE-Tompkins you will be part of the Cornell Cooperative Extension system which has offices in every county in NYS and 1.3 million people in its programs every year. That is a lot of data sets and a lot of people and staff to talk to. It also means you are not limited to Tompkins County even if you are using us as a base.

We welcome any and all kinds of identities, and try to make our workplace the most inclusive community it can be.

Last updated June 22, 2022