New Summer Internship

Undergraduates from throughout the country will assist University of Idaho agricultural economists with research and Extension projects during the next five summers as part of a new internship program.

The eight-week internships will be open to 10 students per summer, offering each participant in the initial group a $5,150 stipend plus travel costs and expenses. Stipends will be adjusted each summer for inflation. The program is funded with a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA).

Five faculty members in U of I’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology (AERS) who are co-principal investigators of the grant — Xiaoli Etienne, Hernan Tejeda, Norm Ruhoff, Andres Trujillo-Barrera and Brett Wilder — will serve as mentors who will oversee a pair of undergraduates per summer. Undergraduates from every state are welcome to apply, but the team has focused its recruiting efforts on undergraduates at University of Idaho, Brigham Young University-Idaho in Rexburg, the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls and the College of Western Idaho in Nampa. The deadline to apply for an internship is Dec. 5.

Participants will work on important research and extension projects related to agricultural commodity marketing and risk management. The internships offer unique opportunities for undergraduates, including the possibility of presenting at the Idaho Conference on Undergraduate Research, which is hosted in Boise during June, or the opportunity to be the lead author on an Extension publication or an informational article. Interns are expected to work full time during the period of the program.

In addition to the opportunity to learn from expert faculty, interns will witness the logistics of grain shipping and exporting during an all-expenses-paid, week-long industry tour. During this tour, they will visit grain elevators, the Port of Portland, the Wheat Marketing Center and other important links in the supply chain.

Applicants will be asked to submit a short essay detailing their interest, as well as references. Etienne has already received applications from as far away as Texas and Virginia in response to her personal social media posts.

“Most of all, we are looking for people who are passionate about the commodity field,” said Etienne, who serves as the project director of the grant.

Tejeda plans to use his interns to tackle several projects that have remained on the backburner due to higher priorities. For example, he’d like to have them work on bulletins covering risk-management topics for both dairy and beef cattle, risk associated with dairy carbon markets in the Pacific Northwest and navigating support programs for both dairy and beef cattle in the forthcoming federal Farm Bill.

“This will definitely help because I have ideas, but don’t always have the time,” Tejeda said.

Tejeda is optimistic that some of the interns may go on to attend graduate school at U of I after forging relationships with AERS faculty and learning about grant opportunities for U of I master’s students in AERS.

Interest applicants may wish to check out the project website for detailed application information.

Published in Catching Up with CALS