For three years, internships became externships. Instead of spending summers soaking in Washington work and social life, interns zoomed in and out of meetings from bedrooms and basements across the country.
Sean Creighton, president of the Washington Internship Institute, which places interns, arranges housing and provides programming for students, said the uptick in in-person and hybrid internships has been dramatic this summer. “As we have seen a return to the workplace, that has correlated with an influx and increase of students interning in D.C.” he said. “It’s just a hub of so much opportunity.”
“I’m a very social person, so I need to be in the office,” said Richermy Batista, 20, a rising junior at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania who is interning in public affairs at the Environmental Protection Agency. “I feel like I’m more engaged.”
“The experience is completely different when you’re in person. I am so much more productive,” said Luna, 20, a rising junior at Yale University who did a virtual internship last summer. “But more importantly, I think it’s those little moments, those little interactions with my supervisor, with the other in-person interns, that you clearly would never have when you’re remote. I feel like when you’re in person it fosters a much closer kind of environment.”
There’s another post-pandemic change as well. More and more of internships today offer hourly pay or a stipend, a big change from just a few years ago. The change was prompted in part by competition to attract workers and a push for equity in the wake of George Floyd’s death as recognition grew that low-income and some minority students are often not able to afford to work for free.
The era of unpaid internships is fading fast, said Kim Churches, president of the Washington Center, a nonprofit educational organization that has been placing students in D.C. internships and arranging housing and programming for decades. Of the 300 interns at the center this summer, approximately 50 percent to 60 percent are paid or receive a stipend. And the goal is for all interns to be paid by 2025. Churches thinks it will be sooner.
His experience has been “amazing,” said Muniz, and his supervisors have encouraged him to explore all of what C-SPAN does and try his hand at different aspects of the job. “You’re not boxed in, which I really appreciate,” he said. Muniz spends his free time walking around the monuments at night, going to museums and hanging out with other interns at the Washington Center, where he lives.
Olivia Knode, a politics and international studies major at Fairfield University, said Washington offered a research internship unavailable anywhere else in the country. She’s spending her summer at the National Defense University’s Near East South Asian Center based at Fort McNair in Southwest Washington. Earlier this month, she attended a cybersecurity conference with delegates from 12 nations.
“It really made sense for me to take some time and come here and kind of get that full experience,” Knode said. “I’m learning a lot, not just from the internship itself but from my colleagues.” And she’s also making time to do other things only possible in D.C. Last weekend she went to the National Archives to see the original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation on display.
Henry Burnham is from Maine but has family in Washington, so he was already familiar with the District before beginning his internship as a research assistant at the Congressional Management Foundation, a nonprofit that provides orientation and training for members of Congress and their staff. A political science major at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, Burnham, 20, has a pretty good idea about what he wants to get out of his summer experience: learning as much as he can and making connections.
For employers, being able to have interns back in person has been a huge boost. Before the pandemic, Kenneth Romero, executive director of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, said interns played a crucial role in researching policy, writing reports and helping organize the organization’s conferences.
“When we interview them, I always say, you know, unlike other internships, perhaps in Washington, D.C., you won’t be answering phones, you won’t be photocopying and you won’t be getting coffee for the boss because the boss gets his own coffee,” he said.
While policy and politics placements are more typical of Washington internship offerings, Reg Sutphen, a theater major, is interning at Washington Performing Arts working on graphic design and video and putting together a program that showcases local artists. It’s also allowing Sutphen to develop business and production skills.
“When you do an art major, you get the kind of reputation that you’re going to be unemployed forever,” said Sutphen, 20, a rising junior at SUNY College at Plattsburgh. “And I dislike that heavily. I feel like internships are a great way to get hands-on experience and have people vouch for you.”
Sutphen has also managed to snag a part in a local theater production of the “SpongeBob Musical” this summer — a role that would be impossible virtually. “I’m used to doing shows alongside my studies, so I thought if I could find a show to do while I’m here, then that would be really good for my theatrical résumé,” Sutphen said.
McKenzie Ingram is another intern whose job isn’t typical D.C. fare. A graduate student in environmental science at American University, Ingram, 20, is spending her second summer as an intern at Anacostia Riverkeeper, where her duties have included everything from tracking bacteria pollution in the river to organizing volunteer clean ups, leading boat tours and hosting the organization’s Friday Night Fishing events. The experience, she said, has been educational professionally and transformative personally.
“Before I started this internship, I was living in D.C., but I didn’t feel like I was really in a community in D.C.,” Ingram said. “These cleanups took me all over every ward, every district, and up and down the river from Maryland to D.C. And once I started getting in these outreach programs and actually talking to a lot of the communities in D.C., I really felt like I was connected to D.C. itself.”
This content was originally published here.
