Summer Internship
This Research Internship Program is planned as a cross-cultural, cooperative learning experience for upper division undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate students who will study under the guidance of an outstanding international faculty. Student Interns will examine and analyze the realities of corporate globalization through selected readings, lectures and on-sight, faculty-supervised, field investigations culminating in reports intended for publication on the Global Justice Centers’ Web site. The program is organized to acquaint interns with the social, economic and political realities influenced by US American foreign policy supporting corporate globalization over the past half century.
Joining Theory to Practice
The entire program is designed to present participants with optimal conditions to achieve our primary objectives of creating a mutually-supportive, international, community-based learning experience with the broad goals of fostering enhanced, cooperative, learning styles that directly benefit the host communities and all the participating interns individually and collectively. Through structured, seminar-like study sessions guided by renowned scholars, the required field research will be organized to place students at the center of every phase of the investigative research plan. Focused on our efforts to heightened cross-cultural understanding through the development of cooperative working relations within the student groups and among the students in their host communities, the interns will be closely supported in their efforts to successfully live, work and learn in local Urban and Rural communities.
Every phase of the Program is planned to bring the participants into close personal contact with the host culture, with the broad intention that all members of the multi-national, intern-research teams will contribute to community projects while helping each other to lay the ground work for future cooperative leaning styles. We anticipate that all interns will enjoy and benefit from this unique international educational opportunity. We project that students, individually and collectively, will gain a clearer insight into the political changes that have been dramatically influencing their own personal growth opportunities and the broader social / economic conditions directly affecting Mexican life and the future of people of throughout the Americas. .
At this dramatic historical moment all of the program participants will have the rare opportunity to work with their counterparts from many areas of the Americas and the Caribbean, including Cuba, and learn first hand the effects of distinctive political-economic and social forces that that continue have a profound influence on all our lives. We further anticipate that the cooperative work and study plan of our internship program, which we may call “Community as School”, will broaden the career and life choices of all our participants.
Based on our prior experiences and student testimonials, we confidently project that all our program participants will benefit from our cooperative,
Participatory Research, study-model which places the participants at the center of their own investigative projects. Through their personal observations and disciplined investigations of the deepening consequences of Neo-liberal, corporate globalization and its comparison with alternative social / economic models currently expanding throughout the Americas , the participants should collectively form their own critical perspective on the nature and consequences of current Economic realities and develop their particular contributions to alternative social-economic possibilities.
An Urban / Rural Study –Research Program in Two Parts
During the first two weeks interns will live with Mexican families in low-income neighborhoods in the City of San Miguel de Allende, settled largely by people who have recently migrated from the country side or Ranchos/Ejidos. Through informal interaction and structured community surveys the interns will investigate the transition from rural to urban life. During this time Interns will also participate in more formal seminar type study and discussions with Center faculty and visiting speakers.
Through the second two weeks interns will live with Mexican families in near bye rural communities where we have well-established, cooperative working relations. Working with and supported by faculty and host community leaders, the interns will conduct supervised, social investigations of the problems faced by the community members such as, migration, transforming family structures, changing roles of women , community economic initiatives, resistance to land privatization, and the search for alternative economic means of survival and development .
Students will be required to work in community planned, cooperative development projects. We anticipate that the combined theoretical and practical, participatory-research experience will deepen the interns’ insights into the effects of NAFTA on the Mexican people and perhaps themselves.
At the beginning of the fifth week the interns will return to San Miguel to write their reports and prepare their public presentations of their findings. During this time, students will resume living with their host Mexican families in the City of San Miguel de Allende.
Certificates of completion and letters of recommendation will be issued to the students upon successful completion of their written reports and their public presentations.
Upcoming Internship Schedule
Past Years Syllabi
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