Research Internship: GOV 362L

The Department of Government has created a Research Internship course in which undergraduate students may receive credit for working as research assistants on faculty or graduate student research projects. Students who successfully complete a research internship will receive three hours of credit (GOV 362L), which will count toward the major. Students, however, may not count more than six hours of internship credit toward the major.

Faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduates who participate in this program must comply with the following requirements:

• Research interns must work between 7-10 hours per week for the entire semester (10 weeks in Summer and 15 weeks in Fall or Spring). This includes the meeting times with faculty members or graduate students.
• Graduate student research projects must be approved by a supervising faculty member, who will meet with the graduate student and the research intern at the beginning of the semester, review two progress reports during the semester, and, in consultation with the graduate student, give the final grade.
• Faculty members or graduate students must meet with the research intern at least every other week to discuss the assigned tasks.
• Faculty members or graduate students must assign the research intern substantive research responsibilities, not purely clerical tasks. Examples of appropriate research tasks include creating annotated bibliographies, transcribing interviews, performing statistical analyses, conducting literature searches, checking references, and coding, entering, and formatting data.
• Faculty members or graduate students must provide brief progress reports to the research intern at least twice during the course of the semester so that the student has a sense of his or her performance. The student must also receive a letter grade for his or her work at the end of the semester.
• Research interns may only receive credit for work performed during the semester in which they are enrolled in the course.

You may email Dr. Derek Epp and the GOV Advisors with questions about the program.

The SUMMER AND FALL 2024 application is now open! Please apply here. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until all spaces are filled.

Important note: you can only take GOV 362L one time.