Background
The Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center Community Engagement Core has been an entity of the University of Arizona since 1993. We are involved with multiple partners including, Tucson Water, Pima County Department of Environmental Quality, the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona, the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, and several American Indian tribes. While most of our interns are in the public health and information science fields, we also accept interns and students in a variety of other fields such as education, social sciences, psychology, law, and business. All interns that we accept have a strong interest in environmental health. Summaries of our current projects can be found below.
Contact
If you have an interest in these programs and completing an internship with us, or have any questions, please send a cover letter and resume to Mayra Vargas at mgvargas@pharmacy.arizona.edu
Graduate and Undergraduate Internship Project Descriptions
- Summer Youth Programs: Intern(s) practice and improve their teaching, program planning, implementation, and evaluation skills. We currently have 5 summer programs (Toxic Detectives, Environmental Scholars, Steps 2 STEM, OLEH, and A Student's Journey). Participants in these programs range from 5th-grade to community college students. Please explore our website to learn more about these programs.
- Information Literacy Instruction: Intern(s) will provide Information Literacy Instruction sessions that they will develop. There will also be team meetings with the staff, students, and interns who are teaching in the summer courses and mentoring from the CEC Director. Lessons range from using Google and other online search engines to using UA databases.
- Indigenous Voices: Interns will gain public engagement skills through the annual Tribal Forum, and in interviewing, writing, and production of the Indigenous Stewards magazine. The intern(s) will gain skills in producing the magazine, learning new software, and collaborating with the team and the communications department. The outcomes of this project include school-based and public activities to produce and promote both major activities.
- Indigenous Outreach: Interns will help communities with data collection and analysis, community programs, school programs, and materials development based on the needs and desires of the individual communities. SWEHSC works with numerous tribal communities in Arizona.
- Risk Communication Research: Intern(s) will gain environmental health information development skills. In addition, they may participate in focus groups and data analysis. The expected outcome of this program is the development of a risk communication model that takes into consideration the risk and safety aspects of public drinking water and the resiliency of the public to comprehend the issues involved.
- Science Cafés: Interns will gain skills in program promotion, organization, and evaluation. The intern will develop Science Cafes in collaboration with the outreach team and our partners and will take lead at the event as well.