Cogen Power Plant Operator Internship

Contact: Anthony Brunetti acbrunet@ucsc.edu (831-291-0790)
Faculty/Sponsor: Elliott Campbell

We are currently seeking interns who are interested in gaining industry experience as
operators in our organization. As interns, you will have the opportunity to shadow our
power plant operators (PPOs) and acquire valuable insights into the day-to-day
operations of our campus.

Throughout the internship, you will gain a comprehensive understanding of running a
large-scale campus that accommodates thousands of students and maintains numerous
buildings across main campus, lower campus, and coastal campus. Moreover, you will
have the chance to learn from our dedicated operators who oversee these operations
round the clock, ensuring smooth functioning of critical facilities and supporting
essential services such as water, power, and information technology infrastructures.
The experience gained during this internship will prove invaluable in various industries
where qualified operators manage critical systems. It provides a solid foundation for
individuals interested in pursuing careers in fields that rely on efficient management of
crucial infrastructural systems.

Within the Cogeneration Shop, we hold responsibility for the cogeneration plant that
supplies power to Science Hill, the central heating system, the central condensing
system, as well as monitoring and operating the high voltage grid and building
management systems throughout the campus. Our team oversees the critical systems
that uphold the daily functions of UCSC, offering 24/7/365 support.

Committee to Bridge the Gap

Committee to Bridge the Gap

• 

  Environmental Policy Internship

  Listing can also be found under Environmental Justice tab.

  Contact: Haakon Williams,  h.williams@committeetobridgethegap.org

  Accepting interns in Summer 2023

  Committee to Bridge the Gap is a non-profit environmental and nuclear policy organization focusing on issues of environmental justice, government transparency, superfund site remediation, and nuclear decommissioning, disarmament, safety and waste disposal. For nearly half a century, Committee to Bridge the Gap has been fighting—and winning—environmental battles that have local, national and international impact.

  Our work is aimed at exposing and correcting the shortcuts taken by polluters and the government agencies which oversee them, and the unholy alliance which exists between them.

  Students will engage in hands-on research in teams with experienced environmental policy staff. Collaboration between CBG and other organizations, policymakers, and established journalists is frequent. Students will learn the nitty-gritty of actually affecting environmental policy and make real contributions to the environment at the same time.

  Current projects include research and policy work on behalf of environmental justice communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles that are burdened with toxic contamination, and research and advocacy work on federal issues relating to high-level nuclear waste. This internship will continue to be remote for the time being. Learn more about us here.

Listing also found in Public Policy tab and Environmental Education tab

Contact: Andrew Carman info@environteers.org Cell: (831-332-0523)

Are you excited about promoting environmental awareness and action? Are you eager to learn how to inspire participation in environmental protection? Environteers.org needs interns to connect the UCSC community to opportunities to engage in environmental activities. Our free resource, the Environteers Weekly Update, empowers participation by publicizing the environmental education and volunteer activities of all Santa Cruz. County organizations, as well as state and national groups. Interns are needed with strong interests in leveraging social and news media on campus and identifying other avenues for inviting students, faculty, and staff to utilize our resources.

The Environteers.org website and Weekly Update e-newsletter are dedicated to making it easy to stay informed of environmental issues and to quickly and easily take action. We publicize the educational and volunteer activities of all of 100+ Santa Cruz County environmental entities as well as those of several state
and national groups. The Update is the most useful and engaging environmental newsletter for our County. The Update always has beautiful photos, fascinating & informative articles, compelling action items, and good news, and it’s free! It is a powerful resource for all who are committed to being informed and in action protecting and restoring our environment. There are currently over 1100 subscribers in the county. The role of the intern is to connect the UCSC campus community to opportunities to engage in environmental activities by using the Environteers Weekly Update. You will not be asking your community for any money or time commitment. Rather you are offering a free and convenient resource for helping fulfill their need to make a difference. We need interns who are: passionate about promoting engagement in environmental action, self-motivating, and effective communicators.

The specific tasks include:
1. Develop social media presence on campus
2. Working with campus media (radio, newspaper) to publicize
Environteers
3. Contacting instructors & professors of ES & other sciences to
create opportunities to inform their students
4. Working with campus entities, e.g., the Sustainability Office, Climate Coalition, Rachel Carson College, Student Volunteer Center, to foster mutual publicizing. 

Looking for intern for Summer AND Fall

Listing also found in Agroecology and Plants tabs.

Contact: Anders@heartlandcollective.org 

Website

Instagram

Heartland is an off-grid, 25-acre, regenerative learning center in Northern California, providing experiences
in four pillars - OuterWork, InnerWork, Celebration, and Transformation. Heartland Collective offers
opportunities to co-create its vision, including through the Cultural Exchange program.
Heartland Collective is looking for Farm Intern(s) to support the management of the 2-acre farm. Interns
will have weekly support via the Farm Lead, as well as volunteer support hours via the Cultural Exchange
program. Ideally, the Intern(s) will live at Heartland, working 25-30 hours per week and participating in the
co-living experience. Housing and meals are available, as well as access to unlimited outdoor recreation,
amenities, and creative experiences. This is an unpaid role.

Sandhills Restoration Intern

Listing also found in Conservation tab.

Contact:  Jodi McGraw jodi@jodimcgrawconsulting.com 

The Sandhills Restoration Intern (Intern) will assist ecologist Dr. Jodi McGraw and Assistant Ecologists at Jodi McGraw Consulting (JMc) with work to restore Sandhills habitat. The Intern will participate in revegetation efforts including seed sowing, planting, transplanting and plant propagation in coordination with the UCSC greenhouses, Jim Velzy, UCSC Greenhouse Director, Division of Physical and Biological Sciences. The Intern will also participate in on-site restoration management including seed collecting, seed cleaning, controlling exotic plants, maintaining outplanted container stock, irrigating, and collecting data as part of restoration monitoring.

Ecological Aquaculture Research

Contact Person: Pallab Sarker, psarker@ucsc.edu

Kapuscinski-Sarker Lab Ecological Aquaculture Research Internship

Contacts: 

Lab co-director, Associate Research Professor Pallab Sarker psarker@ucsc.edu

Lab co-director, Professor Anne Kapuscinski akapusci@ucsc.edu

Aquaculture is the world’s fastest growing food sector and essential is for food security of over 1 billion resource-poor people. Conventional aquaculture diets use fishmeal and fish oil extracted from ocean-caught fish, like sardines and herring, but most of these ‘forage fish’ are edible by people and important prey for higher-trophic marine fish like tuna. About 20% of world fish catches in 2017 were used to manufacture fishmeal and fish oil and this scale of production undermines marine biodiversity, threatens food security of coastal peoples who traditionally eat these forage fish. Rising demand for fishmeal and fish oil and competition for higher value  uses such as human fish oil capsules has caused price volatility problems. 

The Kapuscinski - Sarker lab in the ENVS dept is working to replace fishmeal and fish oil in conventional feeds with microalgae. Our recirculating aquaculture systems in the new aquaculture greenhouse at the CASFS farm is prepared to get live rainbow trout for digestibility and growth experiments. During the pandemic, the intern will work in a hybrid model (partly at CASFS aquaculture greenhouse and partly remote). When working at the aquaculture greenhouse, the intern will strictly follow Covid 19 safety guidelines that have been put in place. Thus, prior to work at aquaculture greenhouse, the intern will receive UCSC covid 19 safety training, as well as other lab safety and fish care training. The intern will assist the team to carry out digestibility experiments to assess suitability of novel feed ingredients for potential inclusion into diets (nutritionally complete pellets) for farmed rainbow trout. We are also interested to use water from our recirculating aquaculture systems to provide nutrient-beneficial water for crop irrigation on the CASFS farm. 

NOTE: Students are setting up and taking water quality parameters in the ecological aquaculture greenhouse

Tasks may include but are not limited to maintaining recirculating water aquaculture systems, fecal collection, feed making, daily fish care, water chemistry testing, fecal analysis, and the maintenance of the greenhouse that contains our research systems. We will expect the intern to contribute to accurate record keeping, data collection, develop SOPs, data entry and organization, and report writing. Successful applicants should have a proven track record of detail oriented work, hold a personal interest in the work to be carried out and be willing to learn on the fly. https://kapsar.sites.ucsc.edu

Research Internship

Aquafeed Decision-support Tool / Open-source Software Development 

Research Internship –Suitable for Remote only Work (Zoom meetings, own computer)

Contact: 

Professor Anne Kapuscinski akapusci@ucsc.edu Postdoctoral Scholar, Brandi McKuin bmckuin@ucsc.edu

Aquaculture is the world’s fastest growing food sector and essential is for food security of over 1 billion resource-poor people. Conventional aquaculture diets use fishmeal and fish oil extracted from ocean-caught fish, like sardines and herring, but most of these ‘forage fish’ are edible by people and important prey for higher-trophic marine fish like tuna. About 20% of world fish catches in 2017 were used to manufacture fishmeal and fish oil and this scale of production undermines marine biodiversity, threatens food security of coastal peoples who traditionally eat these forage fish. Rising demand for fishmeal and fish oil and competition for higher value  uses such as human fish oil capsules has caused price volatility problems. Novel ingredients (e.g. microalgae, single cell proteins, and insect meals) are emerging as potential substitutes for fish meal and fish oil, however, the economic and environmental impact of these alternative ingredients is unclear.

The Kapuscinski - Sarker lab in the ENVS dept is working to evaluate the economic and environmental impact of replacing fishmeal and fish oil in conventional feeds with novel ingredients such as microalgae, single cell proteins, and insect meals by developing an aquafeed decision-support tool. Interns will assist the team to develop an open-source software to assess suitability of novel feed ingredients for potential inclusion into diets for farmed fish. 

Tasks may include but are not limited to review and synthesis of peer-reviewed literature as inputs to the software databases (e.g. environmental impacts, economic impacts, and feed conversion ratio), calculation of environmental impacts using life cycle assessment, calculation of economic impacts using techno-economic analysis, optimization code development for the open-source software, and website development to host the software. Interns will be expected to contribute to accurate record keeping, data collection, data entry and organization, and report writing. Successful applicants should have a proven track record of detail oriented work, quantitative skills, hold a personal interest in the work to be carried out, and be willing to learn on the fly. We will provide training to interested applicants. 

Summer Paid Position

Kids in Nature

Contact: Kate Jaffe, kidsinnature.office@gmail.com

Sustainable Community Apprenticeship

Contact: Andrew Schreiber, windward@gorge.net

Apprenticeship are a 3 month full immersion experience in a land-based intentional community working side-by-side with Stewards of the Windward community gaining practical, hands-on skills with the tools needed to build a life in concert with the natural world

Apprenticeships are tailored to fit the desires and needs of Apprentices, Windward Stewards, and, if appropriate, academic advisors.

Sustainable systems are multi-faceted & diverse so Apprentices should be prepared to learn and participate in wide ranging projects and tasks while also choosing an area of focus for an in-depth learning experience. Areas of focus are co-created during the application process.

Check out the website for more details!

Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farming

Contact: Tori, tori@wwoofusa.org 

Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms, USA (WWOOF-USA) helps connect students with over 2,000 organic farmers nationwide. WWOOF is flexible and can be used for an internship, educational hands-on training, or a summer travel opportunity. The program is open to any students interested in sustainable agriculture, cultural studies, culinary arts, veterinary programs, health and nutrition, environmental sciences, and a wide range of other courses. College credit may be available. Summer opportunities are posted now! With farms in every state, and many welcoming students over summer break, WWOOF opportunities may be closer than you think.

Check out our website to learn more!

Contact: Mark (he, him) and Kristin (she, her) Sullivan

Cell: (831) 295-0005, Email: kjsullivan@protonmail.com

We have been immersed in sustainability, environmental/social justice for 35+ years, as educators and through community and NGO work, climate/biodiversity preservation, activism, and life choices.  We are inspired by all things good on beautiful Planet Earth. We especially love people who do incredible and inspiring things to make this world a better place and stand up for justice, truth, liberty, happiness, and beauty for all.  We lived in our sustainable, solar, strawbale home for 20 years; worked actively with thousands of students; have an NGO/projects in Rwanda, Nicaragua, with the Lakota people, and in Watsonville with farmworkers. We would love to partner with you, as well as to continue our life’s work and further our mission to share the land and “be the change we wish to see in the world.”

Interns would partner and collaborate with us on our sustainable Mother Earth project to assist in stewardship and restoration of our land by assisting in planting native plants, including indigenous sacred beauties of cultural significance.  Project work and physical, hands-on activities may include the following: planting, maintenance, ground preparation, garden work, and invasive plant control. 

• Student interns would work in teams and learn about how private landowners can and ought to be part of the solution to increase biodiversity on their lands. 
• Stipend paid in spring quarter with possible summer work
• We are hoping that this internship will be fun, inspiring, and that it will help to spur similar actions in others. We would love to have you be a part of our collective vision to create a more healthy Earth for all people, our plant brethren, the winged, the finned, and the four-legged. We are open to any guidance, thoughts or suggestions from interns.
• ENVS Restoration 160 a plus!
• Bipoc peoples strongly urged to apply.

Sustainable Mother Earth Project