The Practicum is a 150-hour professional-level internship and the capstone experience of the MS3 Program. The purpose is to provide students with career training that allows them to apply their coursework in a real-world setting, learn from practitioners and leaders in the field, and build professional experience while still in school. This experience may be an internship, fellowship, full-time job, or contract work; most students fulfil this requirement through a summer internship. Ideally, students will produce a suite of products and/or outcomes during their practicum experience that they can add to their professional portfolio in the form of a final Practicum Report. The goal is for the student to emerge with applied experience, a refined set of skills, a broadened area of expertise, and a better understanding of the type of professional opportunities they are most interested in pursuing beyond graduate school.
Here are a sample of Synopses of recent Practicum experiences undertaken by MS3 students:
Food Systems Project Associate, UMass Auxiliary Sustainability Dept, UMass Dining
EDF Climate Corps Fellow, Cushman and Wakefield, New York
Business Development / Communications Intern, Algorex Health Technologies
Student Intern, Clean Energy Extension, UMass Amherst
Policy Research Intern, Mass River's Alliance
Advocacy Intern with Share Our Strength, Washington D.C.
Solar Engineering Design Intern, Picktricity
Intern, Clean Energy Extension, UMass Amherst
MS3 graduates have undertaken practicums in a wide variety of industries and settings including:
- American Planning Association
- Cape & Islands Self-Reliance
- CISA
- Door County Land Trust, Wisconsin
- Earthship Biotecture, NM
- Environmental Health & Safety Sustainability Intern, UMass Medical School, Worcester
- Environmental League of Massachusetts Action Fund, Boston
- Farm Fresh Rhode Island
- GEI Consultants, Woburn
- Linda Loring Nature Foundation, Nantucket, MA
- Massachusetts Food System Collaborative
- Nuestra Comida
- Office of Sustainability and Environment, City of Somerville
- Regreen Springfield
- Resonant Energy, Dorchester
- Senator Edward J. Markey’s Boston Office
- Silverstein Properties Inc, NYC
- Solect Energy
- Taza Chocolate Somerville, MA
- The New Garden Society
- The Repair Association
- UMass Clean Energy Extension
- Verdanterra
- Water Meter Retrofitting and GIS Mapping, Hinsdale, MA
- Wellspring Harvest Hydroponic Greenhouse, Indian Orchard, Springfield MA
- World Resources Institute (WRI), Washington D.C.
