Dear Penn Alumni,

Thank you for your interest in the Fels Public Policy Internship Program. As you can see on our other pages, we spend much of the academic year helping students find internships in the public policy sector in Washington and New York. Once summer gets underway, we switch gears and operate a mentoring and speakers program that has been very popular with students and alumni alike. This year, alumni have several different ways they can participate.

1.  Internship assistance: We welcome the assistance of alumni in facilitating internship placement at your place of work. In the past, alumni have alerted us to internship opportunities, recommended particular students to their internship program, and created placements for interns from Penn. If you are interested in providing internship assistance, please make that selection on the enrollment form below and we will contact you.

2.  Mentoring: This year we would like to arrange individual mentoring pairings for our participating students based on their career interests. At a minimum this would entail meeting with the student who selects you as their mentor at least once over the course of the summer. Some mentors have also arranged for their mentee to meet some of their colleagues with similar career paths. The extent and duration of the mentoring relationship is really up to you and your mentee; some mentors and mentees in past summers met once while others met several times, communicated via email, and continued their communication into the following academic year and beyond. If you would like to participate as a mentor, please note your interest on the enrollment form below. We will match you to a student and email you with contact details by the end of May.

3.  Events list: While we haven’t finalized the details, this year we expect to have a dozen or more speakers and several alumni-student networking dinners which will be organized by topic. If you feel you can’t commit to the mentoring component but would like to attend events when your schedule permits, we are happy to send you a weekly email of events in which you may like to participate.

4.  Events/talks at your place of work: Last summer we held a number of lunches and talks at mentor workplaces. We found that those students who attended valued the interactions with alumni and were glad they had the opportunity to meet people working in a career they were considering. The problem was that in many cases students did not feel comfortable leaving their workplaces in the middle of the day for a non-work related event. If you feel students would be interested in touring your place of work or hearing a talk about what you do (and you’re near a metro), we would be very happy to arrange such an event, preferably late in the afternoon in June or July.