The Raritan Scholars program is a great opportunity to engage Rutgers students in a substantive internship as well as an opportunity for you to advance your local projects.  The Rutgers Scholars course is a four-credit program that requires an undergraduate student to spend at least 125 hours directly involved in a project that benefits the Raritan River Basin.  The response from both students and internship sponsors has been great over the last six semesters with between 8 and 15 students doing internships each semester.  The program, under the direction of Dr. Dan Van Abs, Associate Professor of Practice for Water, Society & Environment in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers’ School of Environmental & Biological Sciences, seeks internship proposals from non-profit organizations and government agencies with operations in or directly affecting the Raritan Basin.

Prospective entities should develop and send a proposed project to Dr. Van Abs.  Each project must be a substantive effort resulting in some sort of clear product or finished result.  Students cannot earn credit for an internship that is clerical or just involving labor (e.g., planting and weeding a garden) – there must be a real learning process involved.  Projects that are clearly related to some aspect of watershed management are preferred.  Projects can involve one or more students, recognizing that multi-student teams can be harder to fill.  GIS projects also can be harder to fill, as those students tend to have a lot of demand for their abilities.  Please propose projects for no more than two students per organization.  If you had a proposal from a prior semester that didn’t get filled and want to try again, let Dr. Van Abs know and you can simply resubmit that proposal.

Proposals are solicited twice a year several months in advance of each semester.  For more information and to secure a detailed copy of the proposal guidelines and application, contact Dr. Dan Van Abs at  vanabs@sebs.rutgers.edu.

Map of Raritan Basin by CRSSA.