Over the past twelve years, the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility has awarded summer intern stipends to over 90 SMU students for public service and research in ethics.  We have served over eighty agencies in twelve Texas cities, twelve states, and nine countries outside the USA.  Through such opportunities, students see the face of suffering and gain concrete information about others' needs, as well as differing perspectives on how to resolve them.  In the process, they draw on their university education and personal talent, honing skills as leaders and gaining both humility and self-confidence.  They also gain experience, which illuminates concepts taught in the classroom, and which enables them to engage in public service where financial circumstances might not otherwise allow.

Applicants are responsible for locating a qualified placement site and securing an officer's agreement to participate. A helpful way to begin thinking about your internship is to consider a volunteer project that interests you. Once you have decided on the kind of work you would like to do, contact an appropriate agency to see if they would sponsor your project. Identify a specific person at the agency to be responsible for supervising your work during the internship. This supervisor must write a letter of agreement to be submitted along with your application and a letter of completion at the conclusion of your internship.

The committee selects the interns based on the following criteria:

  • A well articulated proposal.
  • Agreement between sponsoring agency and the student's project description.
  • Need for and ethical merit of the proposed project.
  • Justice issues it will address and ethics it will help the student to learn.
  • The role it will play in the student's vocational future and maturity.

For those chosen as interns, the salary is $10.00 an hour for undergraduate students, and $12.00 an hour for graduate students, for not more than 200 hours for the entire summer. The hours are worked during the summer on a schedule mutually agreed to by you and the sponsoring agency. The work must be done between June and August. Recipients will be paid in two equal installments: early June and early September. The internship can be done outside of Dallas. This should be a new project that you are undertaking. The internship is not meant to further compensate you for work for which you are already receiving payment. You may work another job while doing the internship, however, if it doesn't interfere with your ability to work the designated hours for the internship.

If chosen, you are required to attend a preparatory session of two hours before the close of the Spring semester, and one exit reporting session early in the Fall semester.  You may also be asked to share your experiences in several other SMU settings.

 

Ready to apply?  Click here.