A think tank in Ghana. A federal courthouse in Manhattan. The historic Roman Baths in England. Film festivals in Montreal.
Those are just a few of the places where Faculty of Arts students recently undertook summer internships, which provide professional and research experiences that are as varied as the programs in McGill’s largest faculty.
Third-year student Rafay Ahmed spent his summer in Ottawa at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Canada office.
“One of the most meaningful parts of the internship was meeting former refugees from across Canada and getting to write feature articles for UNHCR’s website that shared their stories and the incredible work that they’re doing to uplift others,” he says.
Ahmed was one of more than 150 students this year who received internship awards totalling nearly $700,000 in funding through the Arts Internship Office (AIO). The breadth and diversity of these donor-supported summer internships are unparallelled in Canada.
Now, the Office is getting a big lift thanks to the leadership, support and fundraising efforts of Arts graduates Lev Bukhman, BA’93, and Elizabeth Gomery, BA’98, BCL/LLB’03, along with Michael Culver, BCom’75, the Culver Family, Louise Anne Poirier and John Rae, LLD’12. Funds raised will endow the Arts Internship Office to ensure its long-term stability and enable it to focus on its core mission: expanding access to enriching opportunities that give students the chance to apply their classroom learning in real-world settings.
The Office has been renamed the David M. Culver Centre: Arts Internship Office, in honour of the former CEO of Alcan, civic leader and proud McGill alumnus, who championed global citizenship and cultural diversity. The gift is born from Culver’s vision of the importance of developing global citizens – an ethos shared by the Arts Internship Office, which supports community engagement and outside-the-classroom learning experiences in Canada and around the world.
“We are profoundly grateful to Lev, Liz, and all the volunteers who have championed the Arts Internship Office, and in particular David Culver’s family, friends and colleagues for their visionary generosity,” says Professor Lisa Shapiro, Dean of the Faculty of Arts. “The Arts Internship Office plays a vital role in preparing students, alongside their academics, for the next chapter in their lives, whether that’s the job market or graduate studies.”
‘The experience was truly transformative’
Most of the summer internship awards bear the name of donors who made them possible. They help cover students’ living and travel costs related to their internships.
Ahmed, a joint honours Canadian Studies and Political Science student, received the Gael Eakin Canada Internship Award. He had dreamed of interning in a setting like the U.N. to explore issues that he was studying in class in a real-world environment but saw barriers to landing such a position on his own, from the highly competitive application process to the prohibitive cost of relocating to another city for work.
“When I learned about the AIO’s partnership with UNHCR, I knew right away that this was an opportunity I had to pursue,” says Ahmed. He credits the AIO and donor support for making his internship wish a reality.
“This experience was truly transformative and will be invaluable for my career,” says Ahmed.
“It helps you understand the work you want to do long term. For me, the refugee protection sector is something that I’m very drawn to,” he says, along with communications and external relations work – the department where he interned.
"I’m the biggest cheerleader of the AIO,” Ahmed says. “I think they’re such an important part of McGill.”
Providing a sense of career direction
The vast majority of last summer’s recipients received Arts Internship Awards, while 29 benefitted from Arts Undergraduate Research Internship Awards (ARIA). The former are hands-on supervised work experiences with professional organizations, while the ARIAs enable undergraduate students to gain research experience at McGill during the summer, working under the direct supervision of a faculty member. ARIA recipients receive $2,500 awards, which are matched by the faculty member, for a total of $5,000.
“We hear so much positive feedback about their internship experiences, where it leads them in the future,” says Jade Perraud Le Bouter, BA’20, who manages the David M. Culver Centre: Arts Internship Office.
She has first-hand experience to share with students. As a McGill undergraduate majoring in international development studies, Perraud Le Bouter received two Arts Internship Awards, which she says helped her see “what my studies really look like on the ground and what my possibilities were after university.”
Both experiences helped solidify her career interests.
In particular, she calls her internship at Equitas, a Montreal-based human rights education organization, a life-changing experience. “I really found my passion for the behind-the-scenes organizing, doing all the logistical work and coordination.”
“We tell students even if you know what you want to do – or don’t know – you can at least get to test it out for a few months and really figure out for yourself if that’s the right thing for you.”
Setting students up for success
Last year the Office received about 1,700 applications from over 800 applicants. It stages workshops and training to prepare award recipients to thrive in their summer placements and apply their newly acquired skills to their future careers.
Through its partnerships that include non-profits, government diplomatic missions and advocacy organizations, the AIO posts internship opportunities each year. Students are also encouraged to secure internships on their own, allowing them to go back home for the summer and find something in a specific area of interest to them.
Launched in 2004, the Office built its internship program at a time when the student experience was well-established at U.S. colleges but not yet seen as a necessity in Canada.
“We saw the need and that there were many students in the Faculty of Arts who were definitely interested in finding a way to enhance their education,” says Anne Turner, who helped get the AIO off the ground and led it until her retirement last fall.
Donors were also keen to jump on board. “I think the key to the office was getting funding from donors who could support students,” adds Turner. “They get to meet students; they read the reports about their internships. They could see the impact that it had on their education almost right away.”
Support internship awards at the David M. Culver Centre: Arts Internship Office or contact us to learn more about setting up a named award