The Visa User Experience team has a 12 week long paid summer internship that is a fantastic opportunity for social sciences students to learn more about user experience (UX) design and research while getting valuable work experience. (Our successful interns are often offered full-time positions after graduation.) A number of us on the team are psychology, sociology, or anthropology grads and we’ve found that our backgrounds really serve us well in this field, and we wanted to reach out specifically to students in these fields. The Liberal Arts Honors program has an excellent reputation, and we wanted to make sure your students were aware of this opportunity.

 

We are a team of interaction designers and user researchers located at Visa’s beautiful new campus at 183 and Oak Knoll in Northwest Austin, and we have a state of the art 1200 sq foot usability lab—one of the nicest in the country. Our intern will have the chance to learn about user interface design, user research, design thinking and usability testing and will be working on projects with the whole team throughout the summer.

 

UX as a whole is a growing field with many job opportunities and the same kind of salary-earning potential as software engineering. It’s a really rewarding career for people who are technologically curious, good communicators who enjoy working with people, and who want to actually use some of the skills learned in social sciences courses in the real world. It’s also a lot of fun!

 

What we’re looking for: Students who are good writers and good verbal communicators, who can think logically and analytically, and have an interest in design and technology. (They don’t need to know how to code.) Bonus points if they’ve taken research methods courses, statistics, survey design, ethnography, or usability courses.

 

Requirements: Students must be graduating in December 2016 or May 2017.

 

Nice to haves: Knowledge of HTML, Adobe products, audio/video editing tools

 

When, where, what: 12 week long paid internship at Visa’s Northwest Austin office. Pay rate is $22-26/hour based on experience.

 

Perks: Free garage parking, onsite gym, fitness and yoga classes, game room, cafeteria and Starbucks on campus. Visa offers many extra activities and experiences throughout the summer for interns, including a week-long all expenses-paid trip to the Visa mothership in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

INTERESTED? Students can email their resume to me, Charlotte Wise (cwise@visa.com) along with a short writing sample (academic papers are fine) ASAP. We are accepting applications through April 25, 2016.

 

CASL Language Science Summer Scholarship

The Office of the Vice President of Research at the University of Maryland, College Park is sponsoring the Language Science Summer Scholarship Program for undergraduates, through the Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL; http://www.casl.umd.edu/). This program is entering its fifth summer and has been a great success. 

 UMD is home to the largest and most integrated language science community in North America (http://languagescience.umd.edu/). Given CASL’s status as a university affiliated research center (UARC) – and as the first and only national resource dedicated to addressing the language science needs of the intelligence community (IC) – student projects have the opportunity to demonstrate how the research is relevant to, and has potential impact on, national security issues.

Purpose of this program: 

·         To involve undergraduates in cutting-edge language science research with Maryland faculty.

·         To introduce student scholars to government communities that may use and benefit from basic-plus-applied language science research.

·         To build links between research in language science on the University of Maryland campus and at CASL.

·         To create a small, dedicated forum for students to attend weekly lunches with UMD faculty in language science.

At the end of the program, students will create and deliver a short presentation in the early fall that summarizes their work. Non-UMD students will have the opportunity to video conference in and give their presentations instead of returning to campus.

Award and Application Process:

The program will offer $3000 stipends to approximately 10 students to fund their participation in language science research in faculty laboratories across campus.

CASL Language Science Summer Scholarships are available to undergraduate students with prior training in language science who wish to pursue language science research under close faculty supervision. A minimum commitment of eight weeks is typically expected (but is flexible based on student-mentor arrangements) .

 

Applicants must be currently enrolled as undergraduates at a US college or university.

 Required Items

Applicants for a CASL Summer Scholarship must submit:

• A cover letter. This should outline the applicant’s background and experience. Cover letters should be in PDF format (please name the file in the following format: firstinitial.lastname_cover.pdf).
• A current curriculum vitae or resume in PDF format (please name the file this way: firstinitial.lastname _cv.pdf).

 

Deadline

Review of applications will begin immediately, and will continue until the positions are filled. However, for best consideration, completed applications should be received by April 15, 2016.

All application materials should be submitted electronically to Hana Kabashi (hkabashi@umd.edu).

NOTE: Please include “CASL Summer Scholarship” in the subject line.

 

POC: Hana Kabashi MA, CRA, hkabashi@umd.edu; 301-226-8916