The Internship Program
The NHS paid internship program is taught as course ENVMT 476F, ‘Occupational Work Experience in Environmental Management.’ We traditionally accept applications in the spring for the fall semester. If selected, you will work as a paid intern with a partner organization for 162 hours (an average of 9.5 hours per week) over the semester. You will also earn 3 units of college credit.
Most of your work for the course and program will be spent with the partner organization under the supervision of their designated employee, who will act as your boss. Greg Vose (gvose@peralta.edu) is the professor for the course, and you can always come to him with any issues should they arise.
In addition to your work for the partner organization, there are some mandatory responsibilities for the course:
Attend an orientation and capstone session
Participate in weekly online check-ins
Complete a capstone report
These internships provide outstanding paid entry-level work in the environmental field and are open to all (you don’t have to be an existing Merritt student to apply). You must be 18 years of age to be eligible unless otherwise indicated.
Other internships outside of this class are often available. For more information please contact Gregory Vose for more information.
Notes From the Field
“IThis week at Dig Deep was pretty awesome! I finally got to start on my internship projects by scouting out a good location for my new pollinator space (a 46'x5.5' strip along the south fence of the land), creating native bee "houses" with some repurposed tree stumps, and beginning the (extremely arduous) task of breaking up the clay soil (which consisted of hard physical labor with a digging bar and shovel, amending with compost and covering with straw before thoroughly soaking the whole area). My body is so worn out, but my heart is very happy! I can't wait to continue working on this!”
— J.A.
“This week was super exciting because I am starting a research project using the data I have been collecting on Wildlife Insights. I am tracking the wild boar population in the East Bay and can either look at the accuracy of Wildlife Insights in IDing pictures or the abundance of feral pigs compared to the abundance of other wildlife. I am collecting data to look at both, but I will probably choose one of them soon. I will possibly be presenting my findings to their stewardship program once I am finished.”
— C.S.
“I finally received access to the City of Oakland building, so I'm excited to be working closer with my coworkers and assisting more with some in-person projects. I started my free training with ESRI and ArcGIS programming, which is mapping software and location intelligence that allows people to collect real-time data and spatial analytics to generate maps. It was interesting because there are so many different types of maps that can be created versus Google Maps, which I'm sure the majority of us are familiar with.”