Badger Reach – FAQs

The UW Madison Badger Reach program is funded by the Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment.  It is designed to empower students and assist communities and organizations in their purposeful work and extend current collaborations between UW Madison and alumni.

Badger Reach helps students identify and apply for internships in their home city of Milwaukee, Chicago or the Twin Cities.  The program also works to empower students in their internship and professional development work during the summer and beyond.   Students will be recruited primarily from Sociology and Political Science as these departments were co-organizers of the grant application, but students from other L & S majors are also eligible to participate.  A total of 18 students (ideally, 6 for each city) during summer 2017 will receive a $1500. scholarship at the program halfway point during the summer.  Student fellows will also participate in a spring preparation workshop on campus and mid-summer impact workshop held in their particular city.  At the completion of their internship students will compile/prepare handoff materials for future interns and submit a short impact report and public presentation.

UW internship course credit options are available although students are not required by UW-Madison to receive course credit to participate in Badger Reach.  Student fellows are not precluded from receiving additional pay or other forms of support from their internship offices/organizations, even if they are receiving internship credit for their summer internship experiences.

Badger Reach employs a ‘student invested’ approach to internship applications and selection, where students are guided by UW faculty, staff and alumni, but take equal responsibility for their applications and decisions on where they will work.  Under this model, students learn essential skills canvassing opportunities in their interest areas, crafting application materials, marketing themselves, and weighing potential offers in a professional manner.

We have compiled an initial list of internship options in each city based on internships available last summer.  That said, we anticipate our city partners will either want to engage one or more UW students in an internship in their organization and/or will have contacts at other organizations who would welcome student internship applications.

In each city one local organization has committed to collaborating with UW-Madison to help identify internships in each city.  Our city partners will also co-organize the mid-summer workshop in each city where student interns, employer supervisors, local alumni collaborators and UW-Madison faculty come together to discuss common challenges in the internships and student strategies for making the most of their remaining work in their internships.

Milwaukee:  Community Advocates/Public Policy Institute
Chicago:  Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC Chicago)
Twin Cities:  Minnesota Council of Nonprofits

Joel Clark, Career and Internship Instructor Social Sciences, at jclark24@wisc.edu