Internships & Assistantships

Current Interns and Graduate Assistants

About CCRE Internships and Assistantships

Every year, CCRE conducts upward of 100 evaluation reports that aim to provide feedback about how well community programs are working and identify areas for improvement. In some instances, our staff build dashboards to track programming activities and prepare articles for peer-reviewed journals. Evaluations typically involve collecting and/or cleaning data, using mixed methodologies to analyze data, and producing written reports for our clients and their funding agencies.

We engage undergraduate and graduate students from a range of social science and technical disciplines for at least one semester to support our evaluation activities. CCRE internships and assistantships are a great way to build experience in applied quantitative and qualitative research.

We aim to match students to evaluation projects that are of interest in terms of both content area and methodology/level of technicality. Students usually work with one or two CCRE staff members. In addition to getting experience with applied research, we also offer trainings in statistical software and evaluation reporting. Interns and assistants also often get to participate in site visits with our partners in the Mississippi Delta and/or in Greater Memphis.

Our positions for assistantships and interns require that students complete one or more program evaluations during their work period, cleaning and preparing program data, analyzing data, and writing up/interpreting findings. Students will work for an agreed-upon number of hours/weeks based on their individual contract and provide weekly updates for the staff they are supporting. Upon completing an evaluation, students will be asked to present findings from their reporting to CCRE staff.

Requirements

• Relevant coursework or experience: Coursework in statistics, research methods, or experience with applied research, statistical software, or quantitative/qualitative methods are all pluses.
  
  
• Working location: We ask students to be physically present for at least one (part) day per week in the CCRE office at Clark Tower. The remaining hours may be completed at the location of choice. If class schedules allow, we also ask students to join (in-person or remotely) the bi-weekly Monday meetings held in Clark Tower between 10:00am and 11:00am.
  
  
• Work ethic: Evaluation is an iterative, often creative process. Working through an evaluation for the first time can be a steep learning curve which necessitates persistence and commitment. Students might be required to learn a new statistical procedure or write a report narrative for the first time. Preparing an evaluation report is often very different to classwork. There is often not a correct way of presenting information with the contents and structure of a report being tailored to the target audience. As we are serving a client expecting a deliverable, we require students to work consistently and to agreed deadlines.
  
  
• Good communication: Effective communication is a critical practice needed for CCRE staff and affiliates. It is important to routinely communicate progress with CCRE staff and ask for help when needed. We are all learning all the time, and nobody has all the answers. We ask that students be transparent when struggling with tasks, there are conflicting schedules, or other circumstances that may impact work productivity. We can work flexibly with schedules and situations.  

Testimonials

• "Working with CCRE this summer has been one of the most educational and fulfilling experiences I have had since starting school. I have learned about various methods of research and evaluation, data collection, and statistics, as well as the value of working as part of a team. By working with people in seemingly disparate fields, I gained a deeper understanding of how their disciplines are connected and saw the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach firsthand. The sense of community and camaraderie at CCRE was evident from my first day and is something I will always cherish." -Laurel Martens, liberal studies
  
  
• "I picked CCRE for my internship because I enjoyed how diverse the Center was when it came to projects. When I end up working in the healthcare industry, I will now have the ability to look at patient care from a new perspective. Rather than looking at a patient as set of aliments, I will be able to socially understand why they may or may not have come in for care and the best way to educate them for follow-up care." -Bailey Tadlock, healthcare management
  
  
• "I enjoyed this internship so much. I really learned a lot. I build on my data presentation skills, data analysis software knowledge, Excel skills (who knew you could do so many things!), and overall worked with a great team who was happy to teach me new things. I got an introduction to using R, helped work on a literature review and helped write a paper that later got published." -Chelsea Joyner, psychology
  
  
• "I helped analyze data for a few summer camp programs and created graphs to represent the progress. I also helped on the creation of flyers that included this data. This helped me to use my coding skills learned in my statistics class and learned the management of the programming language R." -Zenia Valdez, computer science

Learn More!

To inquire about CCRE internships or assistantships, please email us at ccre@memphis.edu. If you are an interested candidate, please send us your resume and a brief cover letter!