With urban internship experience, Miami students learn to become community leaders
Civic engagement, leadership development part of Urban Leadership Internship Program
With urban internship experience, Miami students learn to become community leaders
A summer internship can be more than just something to pass the warmer months until it’s time to come back to Oxford. It can also be a hands-on opportunity to make a tangible difference in a community close to Miami University. The Urban Leadership Internship Program (ULIP) brings Miami students to Dayton, Ohio, for a 10-week, grant-funded summer experience to explore civic engagement, leadership development, and their future careers.
But what kind of work makes the biggest impact?
“You get to decide that,” said Erin Wahler, assistant director of student enrichment in the Honors College. “So you'll have conversations with your internship coordinator, and you'll get to decide what your main goals for the summer are.”
And although those goals can vary depending on what each student wants to achieve, every participant can explore real-world applications to what they learn in the classroom. It was those kinds of transformative learning opportunities that College Transitions cited when ranking Miami’s Honors College the No. 6 such program in the U.S. No two student experiences are alike, and that goes for ULIP too.
Take international student Anastasija Mladenovska, for example. Her passion for justice, inspired by a childhood in the Balkans, has led her to the Greater Dayton Volunteers Lawyers Project. She helps coordinate legal aid for low income community members. Or Architecture major Aliyah Bing. She decided to offer her services to Habitat for Humanity and has spent the summer addressing the housing crisis by building affordable homes for families.
“I feel like being a part of this internship has helped me just grow more passionate about the things that I'm passionate about,” Bing said. “Being an active participant in helping people, beyond just wanting to help people and actually getting to do it now.”
Janelle Tipton, a Spanish Education and Spanish double major, feels similarly. Her time in ULIP has been spent developing educational material for teachers at the Miami Valley Child Development Center.
“I think the most impactful part of this entire experience has just been being able to learn and grow every single day,” Tipton said. “It's kind of rare to find a job where you walk into the building and you're expecting to learn something new every single day, but that's just been something that I've gotten to do here.”
Even though all three of them have spent their summers exploring very different fields, Mladenovska, Bing, and Tipton agree: it’s been an invaluable experience making a contribution to the greater good of the community.
