Externship Policies and Procedures : Graduate School : UMass Amherst

The hands-on experiences that you can acquire working with organizations and companies off campus can provide enrichment opportunities and beneficial training for your career. These off-campus internships, referred to as externships, can significantly enhance your academic and professional goals.

Policies and Procedures

See Externship Policy and Procedures forms page for all appendices.

The campus and the Department of Higher Education (DHE) acknowledge the importance of externships by granting tuition credit to graduate students who are in approved externship positions. As specified below, employment verification and academic approval procedures are required in order for an externship tuition credit to be granted.

Note Externship applications do not be submitted if the student does not need a tuition credit, i.e. they hold an assistantship or other Non-Working Fellowship that provides a tuition credit in the same semester as the externship.

Definitions and Limits:

What qualifies as an externship?

Externships are training and learning experiences that are substantially relevant to the student’s academic goals and directly augment their programmatic studies.
Externships must be specifically designed for students and are not regular staff positions. Externships are not meant to be a continuation of employment for students who were previously employed in a regular staff position. Only in rare and compelling circumstances will exceptions be made. A letter addressing such circumstances must be submitted to the dean of the Graduate School for review and decision.
Graduate students employed by Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, or Smith College in professional, academically related positions must be in assistantship positions through the Five College Appointment process and are not externships.

Stipulations on Earning a Tuition Credit

Externships must be worked and paid during the semester in which tuition credit is granted. The only exception is during the summer—see below for further explanation.
The stipend paid for externships must meet the campus minimum threshold for tuition credit in any given semester.
- Earnings must fall within the assistantship employment dates for the semester as follows:
  - For Fall semesters, this is typically the last week of August/first week of September through mid January.
  - For Spring semesters, this is typically mid January through late May.
  - For summer semesters, this is typically late May through the last week of August/first week of September.
- Externship earnings do not roll over towards any other semester and cannot be combined with assistantship earnings to accrue tuition credit.
Tuition credits are not applied to Continuing and Professional Education course fees. Such fees cannot be credited under DHE policy.

Who is Eligible for Externships and for How Many Semesters?

Master’s degree students may have a maximum of four (4) semesters of externship tuition credit.
Doctoral students may have a maximum of six (6) semesters of externship tuition credit. The number of semesters of externship tuition credit received while a master’s student will count towards the maximum of six (6) semesters except when the doctoral degree is in a different department or program than that of the master’s degree.
Only in rare and compelling circumstances will additional semesters of externship tuition credit be granted. A letter addressing such circumstances and requesting an additional tuition credit must be submitted to the dean of the Graduate School for review and decision.

Further Regulations

Summer externships must be preapproved prior to the summer, are only allowed when seasonal issues require summer work, and will be included in the maximum number of semesters allowed for a graduate degree.
Externship positions are not in the GEO bargaining unit and do not qualify for any bargaining unit benefits such as health fee exemptions, dental, and parking benefits.
Circumstances exist in which externships will be denied on the basis of conflict of interest. The following are some examples of circumstances where conflicts of interest arise: the student’s department head, graduate program director, academic advisor, or committee member is also an employee of the external agency hiring the graduate student; at the work site, the student is directly supervised by an individual who is also an employee of the university; a member of the student’s immediate family (parents, children, siblings, spouse, and spouse’s parents, children, and siblings) is an employee of the external agency hiring the graduate student.
The dean of the Graduate School has final authority for granting externships and externship tuition credit.
Externship tuition credit will not be granted for more than one semester at a time and must be verified with a new application each semester.
If you are an international student, a copy of your I20/CPT authorization approved by the Office of Global Affairs must also be included in your externship application.

Procedures and Deadlines

Their are three parties involved in this application, the employer, the academic department, and the student.

The employer and the academic department are responsible for completing specific sections of the externship application, as noted below. The employer submits their completed documents to the academic department/student. The academic department submits the completed externship application, which includes all appendixes, to the gradappt [at] umass [dot] edu (Graduate Assistantship Office).

NOTE If the student is submitting the externship request in lieu of the department, they must cc one of these representatives from their department on the email: their advisor, their GPD, Department Chair, or a Graduate Administrator.

Employer

Responsible for the Employment Verification Form (EVF), offer letter and, where applicable, signing their portion of the I20/CPT form.

Employment Verification Form (EVF) is found in Appendix A.
Externship offer letter must be on official employer/external agency letterhead, signed by the supervisor and the student and detail:
- the total stipend amount, hourly wage, and hours worked per week
- the dates of employment
- a detailed job description including description of supervision the student receives

Academic Department

Responsible for the Request for Tuition Credit/Academic Approval form and collecting and submitting the forms from the employer.

Request for Tuition Credit/Academic Approval form (Appendix B) must be signed by the academic advisor, graduate program director, department head, and the dean of the home academic School or College (note this is not the Graduate School dean but home academic dean).

Deadlines

Employers must submit their required portions to the student’s academic department as soon as completed but no later than September 1 for fall semester externships and January 4 for spring semester externships.

Departments must submit the fully completed externship application by September 15 for fall semester and February 1 for spring semester.

Note: For summer externships that require preapproval (see summer externship policy above), all documentation—employer’s and department’s—must be received in the Graduate Assistantship Office by June 1.

Semester Audit and Evaluation

Each semester an Externship Evaluation Form (Appendix C) must be completed by the employer and student’s academic advisor. This evaluation form shall be processed as follows:

Employer

Complete, sign, and send to student’s academic department by January 4 for the fall semester in which the externship took place and May 15 for the spring semester in which the externship took place.

Academic department

Academic advisor completes, signs, and sends to the Gradaute Assistantship Office by January 15 for the fall semester in which the externship took place and June 1 for the spring semester in which the externship took place.