ISERP Summer Interns and Fellows Programs

On June 29th, ten eager high-school students arrived for their internships at ISERP. They joined five undergraduate fellows already working at the Institute for the summer. Over the course of the next six weeks, these interns and fellows contributed substantively to a large number of diverse projects and learned a host of research skills rarely found at the undergraduate and high school levels. This summer marked the sixth year of the ISERP high school internship program and the third of the undergraduate fellows program. Each year, the program has grown along with its students, becoming a more valuable experience for its participants, projects coordinators, and directors.  

 

The high school students came from the tri-state area and beyond. The expansion and success of the program has led to an increasing number of referrals and the quality of applicants has continued to increase each year. We were very happy to accept two more students from the Social Science Research Program at Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, Long Island, as well as the younger sister of a former ISERP high-school intern. Our five undergraduate fellows came from different universities across the country, including Barnard, Brown, Columbia College, Northwestern, and the University of Chicago.

 

In an effort to attract a diverse student group and mitigate the financial burden required of students to live and work in New York City for the summer, ISERP is currently seeking external funding for the program. We hope that, in years to come, ISERP will be able to provide housing to undergraduates and a more substantial stipend to all of our students. The program has had a profound impact on past interns leading them into the social sciences and encouraging them to apply to universities with strong research programs. We hope to continue that trend with additional funding and to increase the resources we can offer to our students, including more formal seminar series, housing, and a defined workspace for undergraduates.  

 

While welcoming a new group of interns and fellows is always rewarding, we were just as excited to welcome back projects that have taken part in the past, and to welcome the new projects that joined us for the first time this summer. The Built Environment and Health (BEH) project, a stalwart of the summer program for the past five years, took participated yet again, taking on five high school interns. In the past, the high school interns working on the BEH project contributed greatly to the vast project, even helping to present a paper at a conference two years ago. This summer, the BEH interns helped test a coding instrument to be used on Google maps, and then performed fieldwork in New York City. Meanwhile, several of these interns have selected aspects of the BEH project to turn in to their Intel Science Talent Search project, a prestigious and highly competitive high school competition for seniors. In the past, we have had several interns participate in the competition, and proudly supported two semi-finalists, one who turned ISERP summer research into a successful project.  

 

Also taking part again this summer were former ISERP directors Peter Bearman and Robert Shapiro, and the Oral History Research Office’s Director, Mary Marshall Clark. Bearman’s interns have been working under the guidance of the Social Determinants of Autism project on complementary studies to the core project. Shapiro and his undergraduate fellow, Sara Arrow, produced a report on the state of public opinion concerning health care reform, comparing the environment in which President Obama will seek reform to that in which President Clinton did. Their report got some pre-publication press on the popular political blog fivethirtyeight.com. Meanwhile, Bart McAllister, a fellow working at the Oral History Research Office is now extending his project through the academic year, hoping to publish his findings on the effect of disasters on organizational networks.    

 

New projects taking part this summer included research by political science professors Fredrick Harris and Tanisha Fazal, epidemiology professor Gina Lovasi, Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar Patrick Sharkey, and sociology graduate student Kristin Murphy. Each of the new projects brought something unique to the program, and we look forward to working with many of them again.