Open To
Ph.D. students in any discipline who will have passed their preliminary exams before the start of the award and expect to spend the majority of their time during the award year writing their dissertations.
The Graduate School offers three administrative internships: Dean's Office, Academic Affairs, and Graduate Student Affairs. These are nine-month internships, running from September 1 to May 31. Each internship provides an annual stipend (equivalent to the Graduate School-recommended Arts and Sciences nine-month stipend established each year), as well as tuition and mandatory fees. In addition, The Graduate School will pay the health and dental insurance premium for recipients who enroll in the Duke Student Insurance Plans.
Each intern will work an average of approximately 19 hours per week, conducting research on topics related to graduate education and administration. The topics will change each year but may be related to:
- gathering and analyzing benchmarking data on stipends, graduate student benefits, tuition, or other administrative costs related to graduate education;
- investigating degree requirements for new or existing programs; or
- analyzing the impact of legislation on graduate education.
The Dean’s Office Intern collaborates on various projects with members of the Dean's Office, including communications and writing projects with the Associate Dean of Communications. Broad categories of work responsibilities include research projects, information gathering, and reporting, such as benchmarking research on best practices in graduate education; communications projects, including conducting interviews and writing feature story content/news for The Graduate School website and social media; and administrative projects, supporting the needs of The Graduate School and the Dean’s Office.
Any eligible Ph.D. student is welcome to apply, but the writing projects of this internship make it ideal for humanities students. Examples of projects may include:
- Collaborating with the administrative assistant to the dean on information gathering and general research in support of Duke’s graduate education mission
- Serving on selection committees for awards such as the Distinguished Alumni and Few Glasson Alumni awards
- Collaborating on event programming and planning to celebrate The Graduate School’s centennial
- Conducting university archival research for the creation of collateral honoring Duke Graduate School’s history
- Providing feedback and user testing to improve communications to graduate students
- Writing content, news, and feature stories that showcase Duke Graduate School students, faculty, and staff
The Academic Affairs Intern can expect to collaborate on projects with the Graduate Registrar, the Sr. Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, the Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs, and the Assistant Dean for Assessment & Evaluation. These projects may span the scope of supporting academic programming (e.g. Certificate in College Teaching, Preparing Future Faculty), graduate education research, and assessment and evaluation (e.g. creating dashboards.) The specific projects may vary by academic year to reflect the needs of the unit. Examples of projects undertaken by previous Academic Affairs interns include:
- Researching and creating online, asynchronous workshops geared to graduate students on topics relevant to college teaching.
- Supporting the production of digital media and digital exhibits for The Graduate School’s Centennial celebration.
- Researching and creating a written program evaluation plan to increase centralized support for graduate certificate programs.
- Analyzing The Graduate School’s Alumni Survey and presenting finding to Graduate School stakeholders.
The Graduate Student Affairs (GSA) Intern will have the below responsibilities:
- Managing editorial process for posts on the professional development blog, including providing developmental feedback to authors and publishing final pieces
- Co-creating weekly professional development newsletter, identifying and compiling content as well as creating graphics
- Serving on selection committees for initiatives such as the Professional Development Grant and Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring
- Supporting professional development programming operations and assessment
- Collaboratively designing programming to benefit graduate student success
- Conducting benchmarking research on best practices in graduate student affairs
Eligibility
- Applicants must be in good academic standing.
- Applicants must have completed the preliminary exam by the end of the spring semester before the period covered by the award.
- Applicant must expect to spend the majority of their time during the academic year funded by this award writing their dissertation.
- All positions require ability to work independently and efficiently, reliability, excellent research and communication skills, and the ability to work well with other staff members.
- No other award (whether fellowship or training-related) may be held concurrently with this internship without special permission from the dean.
- As part of the application process, top-ranked candidates will be invited for an interview with Graduate School administrative staff.
To Apply
You Need
- Approval from your department (see step 1 below)
- Your CV (PDF)
- A copy of your current Duke transcript or DukeHub report (PDF)
- Two letters of recommendation from your DGS and faculty advisor. If your DGS and faculty advisor are the same individual only one letter of recommendation is required.
- A PDF that includes, in the following order,
- An application letter that includes a statement of why you are interested in the internship and a description of your research skills and experience. This should be no more than 3 pages, using 1-inch margins, 1.5 line spacing, and Arial 12-point font.
- A list of three references
Steps
- Get approval to apply from your department. Before you can submit your applications for this award to The Graduate School, you must first get approval from your director of graduate studies (DGS). Programs differ in how they choose their nominees. Check with your DGS.
- Once you have received approval from your DGS, go to The Graduate School’s fellowship application system to submit your application. | Application instructions (PDF)