Internships

Welcome to the CIED Internship Hub

Discover. Connect. Advance.

Your Gateway to Internship Opportunities at UCSC

At CIED, we are dedicated to enriching the professional journeys of UCSC students by connecting them with meaningful internship opportunities. As the primary hub for internships at UCSC, we offer resources, guidance, and access to a network of prestigious companies and startups alike.

Explore Internship Opportunities

Diverse Fields, Infinite Possibilities

Whether you're pursuing science, technology, the arts, or business, CIED provides tailored opportunities to immerse yourself in your field. Our partnerships span across various industries, ensuring there's a match for every interest and expertise.

Available now: CALPIRG

Summer Campaign Jobs and Careers to Protect the Environment:

Want to spend your summer building skills that will help you launch

your career while working on urgent issues you care about like

protectingthe environment and our public health?

Work with CALPIRG and the Fund for the Public Interest to Protect Our Oceans & fight plastic pollution!

Apply Today for our Summer Jobs Making a Difference!

Fund for the Public Interest is seeking hard-working individuals with a passion for social change to fill citizen outreach and Field Manager positions across the country this summer. With offices in selected cities across the country this summer, we are hiring full-time staff, with leadership opportunities available, to work on issues like stopping plastic pollution and expanding coastal protections.

Get experience with the leadership and campaign skills and build connections needed to launch your career
Educate and engage citizens on pressing issues
Build membership and raise money for environmental and social change groups

Find out more about summer jobs to protect the environment here.

2025 Blackstone LaunchPad’s Summer Internship Opportunities: Paid Roles at Blackstone and its Portfolio Companies!

Blackstone LaunchPad invites you apply for paid summer internships – check out the recently posted roles with Blackstone and its portfolio companies across finance, tech, public affairs, human resources, and more by visiting LaunchPad’s Handshake page – which you can follow to hear about future opportunities as soon as they arise! When applying for roles, don’t forget to note that you were referred by Blackstone LaunchPad.

Note: Students must log in or create a free Handshake account using a school address (.edu).

Blackstone LaunchPad offers programs, mentorship, and other resources to help students launch their startups, sharpen their entrepreneurial skills, and access paid internships.

Past Opportunities:

The UCSC CIDER Drone Pilot Training Program
To meet the needs of the growing drone industry and university research interests, the UCSC CIDER team has created a mentoring and education program aimed at training students in the safe and comprehensive use of drones, with a special focus on agricultural and environmental applications. We seek to increase diversity in the drone industry, which has historically struggled to include professionals from a wide range of backgrounds and identities. Apply here for

the 2025 cohort that will open in the fall 2024.

The program takes place over 16 weeks during Winter and Spring Quarters, meeting for approximately four hours of instruction each week both in the classroom and flight practice. During the classroom portion, participants are introduced to photogrammetry and image processing in GIS. Students also meet with a variety of researchers and flight professionals who use drones in the course of their work to explore emerging opportunities in drone aviation.

If you have questions about the program or application process, please don’t hesitate to contact us for more information: cider@ucsc.edu

https://cider.ucsc.edu/pilot-training-program/

Here's what will be avaialble for Summer 25:

QB3 Summer Internship opportunities (applications have closed for Summer 24)

The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences at UC Santa Cruz (QB3-Santa Cruz) partners with local biotech companies and on-campus labs to offer hands-on summer internships to UC Santa Cruz undergraduates. QB3-Santa Cruz seeks top applicants for 10-week paid internship positions, where students will learn scientific techniques and contribute to state-of-the-art interdisciplinary research projects. Some of the current opportunities are: gene network/metabolic pathway modeling, marketing biology intern, UX research, unity coding, etc. Interns become paid, full-time fellows at the biotech company or UCSC student employees if working on campus for the duration of the internship. The program consists of orientation events, placement with a local biotechnology company or UC Santa Cruz core facility, in-program social and cohort building activities, and post-program presentations. Fellows will receive fellowship support via QB3-UCSC. They will not receive academic credit.

Interns will:

Acquire valuable, real-world research experience and training on a long-term project
Work full-time and earn a $10,000 fellowship
Explore career options and define the direction for graduate studies
Network with a variety of industries, QB3-Santa Cruz and student researchers
Work one-on-one with mentors and utilize advanced laboratory facilities
Participate in a weekly workshop with a cohort of peers
Develop new technical, communication, time management, and leadership skill

https://qb3.ucsc.edu/internships/

Transforming Futures: Summer Internship Scholarship Program
The Institute for Social Transformation is excited to offer an internship scholarship program called Transforming Futures. The goal of the program is to open up opportunities and remove financial barriers for first-generation, underrepresented, and low-income students at UC Santa Cruz so they can participate in career-advancing non-credit summer internships off campus. We know that internships provide an important experiential learning opportunity for students to gain professional experience, build professional networks, create future career pathways, and are an important component of student success. Unfortunately, a number of meaningful internships are unpaid, particularly at nonprofit or government organizations, and therefore not an option for many students with limited financial resources. In order to expand opportunities for these students, Transforming Futures provides summer internship scholarships.

https://transform.ucsc.edu/funding/transforming-futures-internship/

The Center to Advance Mentored, Inquiry-Based Opportunities (CAMINO) is an inclusive community that aims to propel excellence by diverse undergraduates in ecology and conservation.

https://camino.ucsc.edu/2023-internships/