Pre-Professional Experiential Learning

Overview

This internship provides an authentic virtual (and in person when available) career experience, emphasizing problem solving, decision-making and remote collaboration skills, along with an understanding of leadership roles in a professional space.

We desire to recruit interns who represent our campus diversity in race, ethnicity, experience, age, gender, background, academic and personal interests.

Applications for the Fall 2024 intern cohort have closed.

Example Skills Developed

  • Use agile project management tools to maintain a project timeline with deadlines and deliverables, for multiple projects simultaneously
  • Effectively translate tasks given in words (for example at meetings or by email) into tangible tasks that involve code.
  • Gain experience with varying data collection tools such as using Qualtrics and Google forms
  • Improved ability to collaborative work with others on code under version control
  • Improved solution-seeking skills (e.g. finding answers on places like Google, Stack Overflow)
  • Professionally collaborate and communicate within a remote team setting using various communication systems such as email, Zoom, Slack and task boards.
  • Develop, understand and practice how Statistics and Data Science contribute to local and state-wide health programs.
  • Begin to understand the reporting, research and evaluation requirements of grant funded projects

Example Responsibilities Include

  • Understand and contribute to the file organization and data flow of current projects
  • Collaborate with other project staff to understand the background information for current grants and projects, what the needs are, and identify data products that can be developed to fit their needs.
  • Assist and support others with programming tasks by writing pieces of, or entire scripts in R
  • Assist with data collection, codebook creation, data management, creating visualizations, exploratory and statistical analysis
  • Create and contribute to data products including reports, manuscripts, websites, and interactive dashboards.

Details & Requirements

  • Campus: Chico State
  • Time Commitment: 135 hours during the Fall semseter. This is 9 hours per week for 16 weeks with in person meetings Wednesday 9-10am.
  • Course Credit: Enrollment in MATH 589 is required.
  • Funding: $15-17/hour. Funding is possible but not guaranteed. Funding for internship placements varies. Some placements may have funding available to pay interns and some placements may not. In addition, students may be eligible for a paid internship due to their individual financial needs. Please contact fanh.analytics@gmail.com for questions.
  • Requirements: At least one class in Statistics, basic proficiency in both Excel and at least one statistical programming language (R preferred).
  • Academic Level: Graduate and Undergraduate
  • Majors: Data-centric majors such as Statistics, Data Science or any majors in areas of Food, Agriculture, Natural Resources and Human Sciences
  • GPA: There is no minimum GPA required to be considered for this internship, but preference will be given to students with a proven track record of academic success (generally B’s/3.0).

Priority will be given to applications submitted by Friday, May 10th, 2024

Partner Organizations

In addition to synchronous meetings with the faculty mentor, student teams will work directly with research project staff at one of the organizations listed below. Students will learn about how data is used and contribute to the day-to-day operations of these organizations.

Center for Healthy Communities

Center for Healthy Communities

The Center for Healthy Communities (CHC) is a leader and connector, striving to provide equitable support to individuals and partners across diverse communities in California by building sustainable access to nourishing food and active environments.

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CRARS

Center For Regenerative Agriculture And Resilient Systems

The Center For Regenerative Agriculture And Resilient Systems (CRARS) seeks to promote regenerative farming practices to reduce greenhouse gasses, restore soil resiliency, increase the sustainability of farms and ranches, and address food and water insecurity.

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Chico State Logo

Institutional Research And Strategic Analytics

Institutional Research And Strategic Analytics (IRSA) provides the University with factual data related to university functions including applications, enrollments, degrees granted, test scores, grades, courses, outcomes, and demographics.

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LSAMP Logo

California State University Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation

California State University Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (CSU-LSAMP) serves as a comprehensive California State University (CSU) system-wide program dedicated to increasing the number of underrepresented students successfully completing quality degree programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

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What our interns have to say about the experience

“There’s nothing better than having a supervisor that communicative and easy to reach. I really enjoyed working with them because they were always encouraging.The whole point of the internship was to learn something new, develop a new skill or expand your knowledge. No matter how silly of a question you had, you will get at least some type of answer. There was only room for success in this internship if you tried and my supervisor did an amazing job reminding us of that.”
“Before starting the internship, my knowledge with data analysis was at zero. But now after completing the internship and learning a programming language to make sense of it all, has helped me develop a new skill that will help expand my professional network depending on what I want to do with my career.”
"I really enjoyed being able develop a skill that I never imagined myself doing before. I came into this internship with zero knowledge with programming languages and being able to use R to create something so simple brings so much excitement."
"The whole point of the internship was to learn something new, develop a new skill or expand your knowledge. No matter how silly of a question you had, you will get at least some type of answer. There was only room for success in this internship if you tried and my supervisor did an amazing job reminding us of that"
"I liked that this internship was very flexible with my schedule and situation. I also liked that everyone was very friendly and welcoming."
“What I liked most was getting to learn a whole new world of data science and learning R. It has made me have a new found love for statistics and having this as a possible career.”

Questions about this or other opportunities?

Contact us at fanh.analytics@gmail.com.