Sunrise Santa Cruz UCSC Climate Action Interns

Agency Sponsor: Jazlyn Solano, jadsolan@ucsc.edu

If interested, submit the Sunrise Santa Cruz UCSC Fall 2025 Internship Application. This is an unpaid internship.

# of Interns:

  • Fall 2025: Hosting 4 interns enrolling in ENVS 84
  • Winter 2026: Hosting 4 interns enrolling in ENVS 84
  • Spring 2026: Hosting 4 interns enrolling in ENVS 84
yellow banana slug sunrise santa cruz logo

Agency Description: 

Sunrise Santa Cruz is building a cross-race, cross-class movement to resist the Trump-Musk oligarchy, stop the climate crisis, and win a Green New Deal for communities throughout California and the US. As a student-led climate activist organization, we mobilize members of the UCSC community to use their voices to demand stronger climate action from our university leadership as well as our local, state, and federal government. In the Fall 2025 quarter we will be resuming our Make Polluters Pay campaign from the Spring 2025 quarter, using phone-banking sessions, sign-on letters to elected officials, and direct action protests to spread awareness about and build public support for the California Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act currently being considered in the state legislature.

Intern Responsibilities: 

Interns will serve on one of our four organizational “swarms,” or subcommittees: communications and media, fun team, recruitment, or research. Swarm members will meet once a week with their swarms over zoom (1 hour) and conduct tasks asynchronously throughout the week (1-2 hours). Interns will also attend our weekly steering committee meetings over zoom (1 hour), where all four swarms come together to provide updates and agree on collective strategy, and attend our general meetings on Sundays from 1-2:30 at McHenry Library (1-2 hours). After being accepted for the internship, interns will meet with their sponsor to decide what swarm would be the best fit for them based on their skill set and interests.

Other Requirements:

Interns who complete the 2-unit internship and would like to remain a part of our organization are welcome to return in an expanded capacity for a 5-unit internship through ENVS 83, ENVS 84, or ENVS 183. The 5-unit internship would be significantly more self-driven and entail more unsupervised work; most likely interns would be running their own climate-related campaign on the side, with support from our Sunrise Santa Cruz members. Interns can discuss with the internship sponsor their ideas for a possible 5-unit internship once their 2-unit internship is already underway.

Intern Shifts:

General meetings are biweekly on Sundays from 1-2:30 PM in-person at McHenry Library. The meetings for our swarms and steering committee are over zoom and the times change from quarter to quarter depending on members’ availability. We will make sure they are at a time that interns are available.

Location: With the exception of the biweekly meetings at McHenry Library, all work for the internship will be completed remotely.

Key Words: Climate Change, Energy, Enviro Justice/Social Movements, Policy

Last modified: Sep 20, 2025