Associated Student Government will hear a bill Wednesday night urging alumni to provide grants for otherwise unpaid summer internships and to earmark those internships for students.
The bill is one of five scheduled to be presented Wednesday. The Senate also is scheduled to confirm a new financial vice president and to hear a guest speaker discuss Martin Luther King Jr. Day preparations.
The internship bill would create new internships and provide grants for unpaid internships. It is intended to help students who can’t afford to spend a summer doing unpaid work as well as those who are in nontraditional fields of study, said Jessica Wash, a member of the Student Services Committee.
“The hardest part is getting funding,” said Wash, a Weinberg sophomore and co-author of the bill. “We’ve been talking to (the Northwestern Alumni Association) a lot. It’s a matter of working out logistics.”
If the program is created, students may begin applying for internships and grants during summer 2007, Wash said. The program will start by funding about 10 internships, she said.
Although fields that don’t typically offer internships, such as anthropology, would be the targets for the grants, Wash said donors would largely dictate where grant money goes. Many students use the summer to earn money for tuition or living expenses, so they can’t afford to take unpaid internships that could help them later in their careers, she said.
Alumni are present in many different fields, and they want to see NU students working in their firms, Wash said.
“Northwestern tends to produce alumni that are pretty successful in any field, even the nontraditional fields,” she added.
The idea of a summer internship grant program has been in the works since April.
“We’ve been meeting with the alumni, different groups on campus, the financial aid office,” said Weinberg junior Whitney Gretz, ASG’s student services vice president. “We’ve been taking into consideration legal issues, tweaking what we want.”
All students would be welcome to apply, Gretz said, although financial need would be considered.
Another bill scheduled for Wednesday deals with improving Escort Service. It asks for a telephone notification when drivers are late, a reservation system, a way to deal with phone calls when the dispatcher isn’t there and an affirmation that the service is running with a full staff, said Leah Witt, author of the bill and a member of the Student Services Committee.
Witt, a Weinberg junior, also authored a bill that asks for improvements to the Frostbite Express. That bill asks for clear communication to students when the Frostbite Express is running and a proper method for determining at what temperatures it should run.
“Right now the Web site says it runs at zero degrees Celsius, which is pretty warm,” Witt said.
Another of Wednesday’s bills asks for the creation of a Web site called NU Link, which would provide students with a calendar and personalized reminders of events, Gretz said.
The final bill asks for the creation of an online apartment evaluation guide for students.
There are also plans at the meeting for Martin Zacharia, a Weinberg senior and chairman of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Committee, to address the Senate about different programs and preparations for the holiday.
The Senate also is scheduled to confirm and swear in Communication junior Sara Ittelson as the new financial vice president. She was selected Monday by a committee.
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