Interns & Scholars
MEP Graduate Student Internships in the Education Sciences are established through a partnership with UW–Madison’s Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences. Supervised by MEP co-directors, graduate student researchers provide the district with deeper contextual information topically aligned with current MEP research and of interest to district leadership. Internships also serve to satisfy program requirements of the scholars’ training program. Research produced by the graduate scholars is presented to the MEP directors, steering committee and district leadership.
In 2023-24, we cemented many of these practices into a formalized internship program. The brief describes MEP’s motivation in facilitating and supporting graduate student internships, how the internship program works, and what we learned from the 2023–24 school year.
Graduate Interns
2024–2025
2023–2024
2022–2023
2019–2020
2018–2019
2017–2018
Undergraduate Interns
Undergraduate research scholars apply for the MEP internship opportunity through the College of Letters & Science and are mentored by MEP co-director Eric Grodsky. Through their internship, the scholars conduct research thematically aligned with MEP Directed work, giving them the opportunity to have a hands-on experience investigating pressing problems of policy and practice in public education. At the end of their internship, undergraduate research scholars present their findings to the MEP directors and steering committee, as well as at an annual symposium hosted by the university.
The 2016–2017 cohort of undergraduate research scholars, Noor Hammad, Samantha Chase, and Kelly Giuliano, all students in Sociology, focused their research on programmatic elements of four-year-old kindergarten. Their research provided valuable information regarding school readiness and the effectiveness of previous 4-year-old kindergarten curriculum and assessments.
- Hammad conducted an observational study of 4K ELL student interactions with teachers and peers. Presentation (PDF)
- Chase compared three different 4K assessments – PALS, IGDI and GOLD. Presentation (PDF)
- Giuliano compared four curricular programs for 4K classrooms. Presentation (PDF)
Communications Interns
MEP communications interns assist the MEP team with the development and execution of an extensive communications and outreach plan to disseminate research findings to targeted audiences and the general public. The interns gain hands-on experience with communicating across multiple audiences, developing web content, writing press releases and blog posts, and creating digital communication tools.
If you are interested in learning more about opportunities to work with MEP, please contact the project manager.