Community services internships
See listings of internship opportunities.
Internships are available with such local agencies as the Community Youth
Services, Kokua, Safeplace, the Thurston County offices of the state
Department of Social and Health Services; the Crisis Clinic; and, in Tacoma,
the YWCA Domestic Violence Shelter, DSHS Drug Court, Catholic Community
Services, and the Franciscan Hospice Center. Many additional agencies
throughout Washington cooperate with the University, and agency staff
attempt to aid students in all possible ways.
During the course of the study, students increase their knowledge of the
social science approach to solving human problems and gain the intellectual
skills, moral insight and humanistic concepts needed to succeed
professionally. The curriculum also encourages students to develop the
ethical and analytical thinking essential to professional life in social
work, law, foreign service and teaching.
Each student has to complete a minimum of 12 credits (which translates
into 600 hours) of internships, spread out in three different placements.
Their first one is usually 150 hrs (10 hrs/wk) the second one is 150 hrs
(10hrs/wk) and the third one is 300 hrs (20 hrs/wk). Often, students try to
get their last placement somewhere where they might continue with
employment.
There are several ways that students find their placements:
- They hear of a placement from another student that sounds
interesting to them, and they seek it out
- They read of the internship in our Resource book of Internships
(also on the Web page), and go out to interview
- The Internship supervisor recognizes a training need in the student,
and makes a suggestion to that student that they be placed in a specific
internship
If you'd be interested in getting your agency into the Resource Book for
possible interns, please:
- Write up an approximate or suggested job description
- Include where they would be working (inside? in the field?), with
whom (what is the population that they would be working with, youth?
single moms? battered children?) and if there is any pay (as one can
imagine, students pick the paying placements first). There are many
students who are eligible for Federal and State Work Study.
- Send this to: St. Martins University, Attn: Katia Shkurkin, 5300
Pacific Ave SE, Lacey, WA 98503‑1297; or fax to: 360-459-4124; or email
to
kshkurkin@stmartin.edu.