DACSS Practical Applied Learning Internships

Practical Applied Learning (PAL internships offer students an opportunity to receive course credit while working for the DACSS Program.  Open to current UMass Undergrad and Graduate students, PAL interns can earn 2-3 credits per term in a wide variety of areas, including software development, course materials preparation, website maintenance, student recruitment, events, newsletter production, journalistic content and more.  

Eligible students who successfully complete a PAL internship may have the opportunity to continue as a paid employee, as an undergraduate or graduate hourly student employee, with the possibility for summer employment as well. However, successful completion of a PAL internship does not guarantee a subsequent paid position.

Students selected to participate in a DACSS internship will be enrolled in DACSS  598P Practicum; DACSS Practical Experience for either 2 or 3 academic credits. 

Important notes for the PAL Internship Program

• Undergraduate students may take up to 18 practicum credits while at UMass. Those credits may count toward the total needed for graduation, but they do not necessarily count toward your undergraduate major or master's requirements - please be sure to check with your academic advisor.  
• Generally, 1 credit hour is equivalent to about 40 hours of work during the semester and students may enroll for 2 to 3 credits per semester. 
• The practicum is graded as pass/fail.

If you are interested in enrolling in a PAL internship, contact DACSS [at] UMass [dot] edu.  Include a note about which position(s) you are interested in and a resume.

Administrative Team

Project Manager

Primary duties include: 

• Work with the Director to create and maintain to-do lists
• Work with other coordinators to track work across multiple teams
• Take notes at Project Leads and other meetings with Director
• Maintain Student Job Descriptions
• Perform other regular and irregular clerical and administrative tasks related to planning seminars, classroom setup, communications and marketing, etc.

Events Coordinator

Primary duties include: 

• Create and maintain an annual DACCS Events Calendar, with careful attention to avoid conflicts with other major university program dates.
• Take the lead on organizing, supporting, and attending DACSS-sponsored events
• Enter content into online event calendars around campus
• Share publicity information with various campus partners
• Reserve rooms, order food and drinks and allocate necessary marketing collateral
• Coordinate poster printing and other event-related activities
• Provide clear communication with invited guests, send confirming email with details
• Help create website content to promote upcoming events
• Other regular and irregular clerical and administrative tasks

Facilities Coordinator

Primary duties include: 

• Help maintain an organized and efficient shared workspace
• Provide technical and facilities support for other staff and students 
• Order materials as needed, with approval from Director or staff
• Ensure adequate supplies and supply closet organization
• Help with decoration of Bartlett space
• Ensure clean shared space
• Help settle new employees into office space, including coordinating various facilities and technology issues as needed
• Perform other regular and irregular clerical and administrative tasks

Administrative Assistant

Must be reliable, responsible, and detail-oriented. This position requires strong personal initiative and a problem-solving mindset, and the ability to work independently as well as with a team. Must be able to work with a diverse population. Strong preference and guaranteed hours for a student who plans to work in the DACSS office and is willing to be available for minor facilities or technical assistance in urgent situations.

Primary duties include: 

• Execute recurring daily and weekly clerical and administrative office tasks
• Help organize, support, and attend DACSS-sponsored events
• Upload files to DACSS admin dashboard to maintain internal systems
• Other administrative work related to dashboards as needed
• Create and distribute critical emails and letters
• Print and distribute publicity materials as needed
• Create email blasts for upcoming events using Constant Contact or other platforms
• Compile data for analytics reports
• Other regular and irregular clerical and administrative tasks

Outreach Team

Student Outreach Ambassadors

Must be reliable, responsible and friendly. This position requires strong interpersonal skills, an enthusiasm for the DACSS program and an interest in working with prospective and incoming students from a wide range of diverse backgrounds. Prior experience in the service sector or in customer service is a plus. 

Primary duties include:

• Communicate with potential and incoming students
• Meet in person or on Zoom with all interested prospective and incoming students
• Read and update various FAQs targeted to incoming students
• Organize and host DACSS information sessions
• Organize and attend DACSS-sponsored events
• Contribute to the planning of Accepted Students event
• Respond to all email inquiries within 24 hours 
• Communicate with accepted students, including Automated Journey and Personal Contact to arrange interviews
• Visit classrooms and other campus events to share information and recruit for DACSS 
• Compile data for analytics reports
• Organize, support and attend DACSS-sponsored events
• Regular and irregular clerical and administrative tasks
• Summer: Tutoring
• Summer: Design schedule for 4+1 and publicity

Instructional Workshop Ambassador

Primary duties include: 

• Summer : design and update tutorials 
• Summer: design and update GitHub materials for individual website
• Deliver library workshops
• Online “tastes”
• Tutor students in GitHub for Careers (individual appointments and workshop)

Careers Ambassador

Must be reliable, responsible, and detail-oriented. This position requires strong personal initiative and the ability to work independently, as well as the ability to work well with external stakeholders. Prior job experience and/or an interest in the broader issues of careers and stakeholder outreach are a plus. Must be able to work with a diverse population.

Primary duties include:

• Contribute original and linked information to a careers archive
• Work with individual students on careers-related preparation
• Assist with preparation of Careers newsletter, including identification of high-interest potential jobs
• Attend Careers related events to represent the program and to be available to answer questions and schedule student follow-up meetings
• Help maintain contact list of external contacts and stakeholders
• Assist with fundraising efforts, including contributions to written and recorded materials
• Compile data for analytics reports
• Organize, support and attend DACSS-sponsored events
• Other regular and irregular clerical and administrative tasks

Communications Team

Website Editor

Primary duties include:

• Plan website content to match overall communications strategy
• Edit and maintain all website content, working with SBS college staff as needed to ensure updating of news, event listings and front page features, etc.
• Feature engaging stories and headlines on the DACSS homepage
• Coordinate with Journalists and other Comms team members to ensure website content is current and front page features are regularly updated
• Update list of students, staff and faculty (elfsight)
• Update course availability listings (elfsight)
• (Optional) update other key pages with html, elfsight or other tools
• Track and identify effective website content (e.g., clicks, time spent, etc) to make recommendations on future content and strategy
• Summer: Elfsight updates to courses and other critical content
• Summer: track and identify effective content
• Summer: plan for next Academic Year
• Summer: plan for future website projects (overall layout and links to examples of needed features)

Newsletter Editor

Primary duties include: 

• Plan newsletter content to match overall communications strategy
• Create and edit biweekly newsletter
• Feature engaging stories and headlines, including visual elements
• Coordinate with Journalists and other Comms team members to ensure newsletter content is ready to meet deadlines
• Collect information from faculty and other sources to feature in newsletter
• Track and identify effective newsletter content (e.g., clicks, opens) to make recommendations on future content and strategy
• Summer: update newsletter distribution list
• Summer: track and identify effective content
• Summer: plan for next Academic Year

Photography/Videography Specialist

Primary duties include: 

• Develop and maintain the program video library, hosted on YouTube or elsewhere
• Edit videos for quality and presentation value as needed
• Develop and implement a branding scheme for program videos
• Identify high-quality video footage to use in compilation or excerpt videos
• Attend events to provide photography and video support as needed
• Assist with preparation of video coverage of student research projects
• Assist with transfer of faculty videos to program shared account
• Identify photo and video media to use on website and in other media
• Editing photographs and other content for department’s Drupal-based website

Social Media Specialist

Primary duties include:

• Coordinate social media plan with overall communications strategy
• Create and maintain social media accounts (e.g., on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, Instagram)
• Create, schedule, and publish social media content for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn on an ongoing basis.
• Write engaging captions for social media posts, including use of relevant hashtags
• Create and maintain regular social media calendar
• Invite and administer invitation-only accounts
• Actively cultivate social media communities, and identify key influencers
• Track and identify effective social media posts, and make recommendations on post content and strategy
• Summer: expand social media communities
• Summer: track and identify
• Summer: plan for next Academic Year

Program Journalist

Primary duties include: 

• Contribute feature writing to program media vehicles (e.g., website, social media, newsletter, annual report, etc)
• Ideally will have a background in scientific writing or data-driven journalism
• Writing press releases for upcoming or past events
• Interviewing student researchers, faculty or event presenters/attendees
• Obtaining background information from interviewees
• Selecting and confirming appropriate quotes from presenters and/or attendees

Technology Team

Technology Team Coordinator

The Data Analytics and Computational Social Science (DACSS) program is seeking a student to coordinate the ongoing work of the DACSS Technology Team. We have small teams of students working to actively develop software to support internal administration of academic departments, instructional technology for multimodal teaching and various research-related software packages.

Candidates must be reliable, have experience in management or other leadership positions, and feel comfortable with project management, task assignment, and the overall software production workflow. Must be able to work with a diverse population. While this position does not necessarily involve programming, we are looking for a coordinator with coding experience, and preferably experience in data science and data analytics. Familiarity with R and Shiny, particularly RMarkdown, Distill, and LearnR are preferred, but not required. Experience with Google App Scripts and/or designing effective UI/UX is also a plus. All students who join the Tech Team may participate in our R training; however, students who are not already highly proficient in R, are required to attend as part of unpaid training.

Primary duties include:

• Prepare functional specifications of coding projects under development
• Track progress of ongoing tasks and work completed 
• Regularly update list of critical tasks 
• Work with Program Staff to monitor task priority and deadlines
• Work with Program Staff to monitor project process
• Oversee and directly manage team work tools (qualtrics, slack, github)

Software Engineer, Research Technology

Primary duties include:

• Prepare functional specifications of coding projects under development
• Write, edit and debug code to: Deploy software to support data collection analysis, Create, maintain and document R packages developed in house, Create and maintain GitHub repositories, Clean and preprocess data and generate documentation, Create and maintain attractive client-side interfaces
• Prepare and document tutorial screencasts
• Work with clients to refine existing software
• Being “on call” during software deployment and other critical times

Software Engineer, Administrative Technology

The Data Analytics and Computational Social Science (DACSS) program is seeking one or more students to intern (work) with the DACSS Administrative Technology Team. The Administrative Technology Team is responsible for building, maintaining and deploying a bespoke administrative dashboard system and accompanying backend data management system. The administrative dashboard system supports evidence-based decisions and data management across a range of internal administrative routines, such as admissions, recruitment, advising, course scheduling, budgeting, and accounting. This position is open to graduate or undergraduate students.

Candidates must be reliable, ready to work as part of a team, feel comfortable writing and giving instructions for new programmers, and have a strong attention to detail. Familiarity with R and Shiny, particularly RMarkdown, Distill, and LearnR, are preferred but not required. Experience with Google App Scripts and/or designing effective UI/UX is also a plus. All students who join the tech team will be given the opportunity to audit DACSS 601; students who are not already highly proficient in R are required to attend as part of unpaid training.

Primary duties include:

• Prepare functional specifications of coding projects under development
• Write, edit and debug code to Create and maintain automated business process support using Google App Scripts and other software packages; create, maintain and document R packages developed in-house; create and maintain GitHub repositories; deploy dashboards to a cloud-based server; clean and preprocess data and generate documentation; and create and maintain attractive client-side interfaces
• Prepare and document tutorial screencasts
• Work with clients to refine existing dashboard systems and databases
• Being “on call” during software deployment and other critical times

Instructional Design & Support Team

Instructional Designer

The Data Analytics and Computational Social Science (DACSS) program is seeking one or more students to intern (work) with the DACSS Instructional Design Team. The team is responsible for creating and maintaining course materials to support multimodal CSS education, including online resources, reading lists, recorded lectures, lecture materials, quizzes, class activity instructions. Familiarity with specific course topics is a plus, but not strictly necessary. This position is open to graduate or undergraduate students.

Primary duties include:

• Identify resources on specific topics
• Create and edit slides and other AV materials
• Edit and maintain lecture videos
• Create and edit materials to support course assessment and class activities
• (Optional) Write, edit and debug code to: design, build, and deploy interactive web-based tutorials and assignments; update and deploy existing assignments as needed; develop working examples using social science datasets; and manage and optimize server environment for student traffic
• Edit and debug classroom materials
• Work with faculty to edit and update materials as needed
• Stay in communication with faculty and share drafts in progress

Software Engineer, Instructional Technology

The Data Analytics and Computational Social Science (DACSS) program is seeking one or more students to intern (work) with the DACSS Instructional Technology Team. The team is responsible for building and maintaining tools to support online and multimodal CSS education, including our “blogbuilder” package, course-specific GitHub pages, and cloud-based tutorials written in Shiny and R. We are also seeking a software engineer familiar with other online tools such as hosting and running online experiments using available libraries such as jsPsych or psychPy, mTurk and the mTurk API, collecting health data through the FitBit API. This position is open to graduate or undergraduate students.

Candidates must be reliable, ready to work as part of a team, feel comfortable writing and giving instructions for new programmers, and have a strong attention to detail. Familiarity with R and Shiny, particularly RMarkdown, Distill, and LearnR, are preferred but not required. Experience with Google App Scripts is also a plus. All students who join the tech team may participate in our R training; students who are not already highly proficient in R are required to attend as part of unpaid training.

Blog Manager primary duties are to

• Write, edit and debug code to: maintain a GitHub pages course site for all DACSS courses; update all course websites twice a week, once within 24 hours of class; collect information from students and distribute to faculty; and send list of any problem posts to course assistant.
• Contribute to other programming work as needed.
• Be “on call” during software deployment and other critical times.

Tutorial Manager primary duties

• Write, edit and debug code to: design, build, and deploy interactive web-based tutorials and assignments; update and deploy existing assignments as needed; develop working examples using social science datasets; and manage and optimize server environment for student traffic.
• Explore alternative hosting options
• Contribute to other programming work as needed.
• Be “on call” during software deployment and other critical times.
• Organize and deliver software training as needed.