This is a developing story and will be updated as new information becomes available. Last updated April 20 at 1:15 a.m.
Northwestern University in Qatar will not run its Summer Internship Grant Program this year, NU-Q Career Services Manager Ahmad Alony and Maggie Smith, Northwestern Career Advancement Student Career advising assistant director, wrote in an April 8 email to NU-Q SIGP applicants.
“The NU-Q Summer Internship Grant Program (SIGP) has been suspended for this academic year following internal review and consultation with NU-Q leadership, given the current suspension of business travel,” Alony and Smith wrote. “This decision has been made after careful consideration with the safety and best interests of NU-Q students as our priority.”
SIGP provides funding for undergraduates with demonstrated financial need to undertake unpaid summer internships. The program is offered to students on NU’s Evanston and Qatar campuses.
Iran launched a series of strikes Feb. 28 on Gulf Arab states, including Qatar, following a U.S.-Israel joint-military operation. NU-Q has responded to conflict in the region in several ways, including sheltering-in-place, moving operations online and evacuating housing multiple times.
Forty-two NU-Q students asked administrators to reconsider its decision on SIGP in a petition sent to them on April 9.
NU-Q would not reconsider its stance on the program, according to an April 12 email sent by Alony and Assistant Director for the Student Experience Indee Thotawattage.
In their petition, NU-Q students wrote that the suspension did not account for students already at their internship location and that internship locations can be changed after acceptance. Travel safety concerns would not apply in those instances, the students wrote. They added that the decision limited financial accessibility to internships.
“We believe that the complete cancellation of SIGP may not fully account for the diverse situations and needs of the student body,” the petition stated.
The Undergraduate Language Grant, which provides students up to $5,000 to study a foreign language abroad over the summer, was also suspended on April 8, according to an email to students from the NU-Q Research Office. ULG has since been reinstated after NU-Q students appealed the decision in an email.
An NU-Q Medill student, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, had applied to ULG. She said because the grant was reinstated, she is not sure why SIGP wasn’t. Online internships could also still be an option that maintained student safety, she said.
“I’m not sure why the decisions for these two programs are different,” the student said.
Following the reinstatement of ULG, an NU-Q Medill first-year, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said some NU-Q students will continue to advocate for SIGP’s reinstatement.
According to the Northwestern Career Advancement website, NU-Q students were slated to be notified of the status of their SIGP applications on March 31.
An NU-Q Medill student who applied to SIGP and requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation said the decision was a “rupture” for many students’ summer plans.
“There were students literally writing essays when they were listening to missiles being intercepted in the sky because that would be important for the future,” he said.
The student said feels NU-Q could have been more specific about the reasons that led to the SIGP suspension.
The student added that the conflict in the region had impacted many NU-Q students’ summer opportunities and internships they had been looking forward to.
“A lot that would happen during the spring term was already taken from us,” he said. “Now, what we would have during summer as a way to recover from all the things we faced was again taken from us.”
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— NU-Q to stay in remote operations until end of school year
