Angela Green
Chloe Wooster
Ohio University, the newest member of the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty, awarded the first consortium summer internships to OHIO students.
Angela Green (Social Work), Kees VandeStadt (Geography), and Chloe Wooster (Social Work) will join the SHECP internship program this summer.
Green says she is very much looking forward to her summer internship with the consortium, which was established in 2011 to foster collaboration across member institutions in poverty studies and the preparation of students “for a lifetime of professional, civic, and political activity that will diminish poverty, drawing on a multitude of perspectives and initiatives,” says the SHECP website.
SHECP enhances college education on poverty and related issues through the integration of classroom study with summer internships and extra-curricular activities.
One of the reasons Ohio University was accepted for membership is its established curriculum in poverty studies, which is the focus of the Wealth & Poverty theme and its Wealth and Poverty Certificate. All three OHIO interns are also pursuing the Wealth and Poverty Certificate (CTWLTH) in addition to their majors.
Internships take place across the country and in a variety of settings and fields of service that capture the interdisciplinary nature of the program including business and economic development; child services and education; community action; environmental issues; healthcare; homelessness and social services; hunger; and legal aid for both civil and criminal matters.
Stories from participants in the program reveal that the internship is the core SHECP experience for students. Interns are paid a subsistence wage, living with other interns to make for a collaborative learning experience in which students engage each other in the issue of poverty, reflecting on the work at their respective agencies and organizations. Students do internships in communities away from their home institutions. Interns gather prior to departure for preparation and training and then reconvene afterward for SHECP’s annual symposium that focuses on a specific poverty-related theme and features top scholars and practitioners working in the field. This year the symposium will be held at Virginia Military Institute & Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA, July 29-31.
The SHECP membership and internships were made possible through an 1804 grant obtained by Dr. Stephen J. Scanlan (Sociology and Anthropology), Dr. Matthew Layton (Political Science), and Dr. Rachel Terman (Sociology and Anthropology) as well as initial support from the College of Arts and Sciences and College of Health Sciences and Professions.
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