A Day with the Austin Cohort
By Kyle Desrosiers, SHECP Communications Intern
The Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty (SHECP) seeks to equip undergraduate students with the tools needed to better understand the root causes of poverty in America and to prepare them for a lifetime of professional and civic efforts to diminish poverty. Through its summer internship program, SHECP interns glean insight and skills from their engagement and meaningful service is rendered to communities in need.
Austin, Texas, is among the 18 communities hosting SHECP interns this summer. There, six interns are working for a variety of nonprofits across the city. Because interns are placed across the country in a variety of fields — such as education, healthcare, legal services, youth outreach, and business management — each summer internship placement offers distinct opportunities.
Hamilton College junior James Coakley is interning at the YWCA Greater Austin. The YWCA strives to “eliminate racism, empower women” and has been active for 107 years across Travis County. Coakley works with the YWCA Training Institute. The majority of his work is data analysis on client demographics, which supports the grant-writing efforts of a grant manager.
Coakley was excited to work with the YWCA because he has a vocational aspiration to serve the community through nonprofit work.
“This is a chance to work with a local organization that is very community-based,” said Coakley. “I realized that if I do nonprofit work in the future it will be directly in a community I care about because it is very rewarding to do work on the ground.”
Coakley’s day starts, along with his fellow interns, at a housing cooperative near the University of Texas campus. The co-op affords SHECP low-cost rent in exchange for four-hours participation in cooking and cleaning per week on the part of the interns. A short bus ride takes Coakley to the YWCA each morning. There, his main focus is research, but his day is flexible, and he is frequently asked by administrators to assist with other tasks. In the evenings, he shares a meal with his cohort and then uses the co-op gym. Coakley and other interns find it rewarding to spend time debriefing and unwinding with cohort members at the end of the day.
“Sometimes you’ll see something that is upsetting, or you’ll see someone who is really struggling, and it is hard to come back and forget it,” said Margaret Shetler, a SHECP intern from Washington and Lee University. “It is great to have people to share the learning experience with. You share highs and lows with a like-minded support system.”
Shetler is working at Caritas of Austin, where she spends her days shadowing client case managers, visiting housing sites, and going to court. Caritas seeks to prevent and end homelessness for people in Greater Austin.
Though the interns often start and end the days together by sharing meals, daily life can look drastically different. For example, some interns will begin work earlier in the morning while others may work longer days and have occasional weekdays off.
Shay Brunvand, University of Vermont, is interning for the Austin Chamber of Commerce. She works with the education and talent team at the chamber. Brunvand finds that her work — mostly in research and communications — has a tangible impact.
“The chamber has the initiative of increasing the rate of high school students going onto some form of post-secondary education,” said Brunvand. “I am looking at the rate of FAFSA submission. The rates of FAFSA reports being filed are higher for the schools we are working with, which means that more students are looking at college as an option and will get financial aid.”
On the mid-July day we visited, Brunvand was looking into the FAFSA verification process and whether it is putting too much of a burden on students. She collected stories of students who had complications filing for FAFSA, which puts a tremendous burden on their eligibility to receive financial aid.
In the mornings, Brunvand often attends offsite events and meetings. For example, during the first week of July, Brunvand traveled with young women from area high schools and colleges to the 2019 Impact Austin Discovery Day. This event exposed young women to a variety of career opportunities. After attending events, Shay will create briefs and blog posts for the chamber’s website.
Brunvand’s afternoon is filled with ongoing research projects and occasional staff meetings. In the evenings, the chamber will often host or sponsor community events.
“One of the most interesting events I attended that the chamber put on was ‘State of Talent in Austin,’ an event at the UT Austin Business School,” said Brunvand. “It was all about what businesses in Austin are looking for and what schools in Austin are doing, and about how we can connect the skills of students to the skills that businesses want.”
Brunvand remarked that her experiences this summer have led her to discover her career aspirations with deeper clarity.
“I was excited about this internship placement because I always had an interest in policy. I like really being able to understand the impact of the work I am doing,” said Brunvand. “If I do go into politics, I want to make sure the policy is meaningful and that there is a definitive benefit once it is introduced. I want to be a part of the common good.”
SHECP interns have the unique opportunity to both learn from and give back to the organizations they are partnered with — and the community it serves by extension. Interns have a tremendous impact on the institutions and organizations they serve.
Haleigh Campbell, YWCA Volunteer and Training Institute coordinator, finds having undergraduate SHECP interns valuable and impactful.
“Everything we do here ties back to our mission. James helping with our grant-writing, ultimately helps us with funding, which ultimately helps us with everything we do,” said Campbell. “Recently we received a grant to provide transportation passes. That is a direct impact that interns helped us create for our clients who have barriers to transportation.”
Interns are not only able to gain vocational insight, but also examine their personal commitment to being civil servants and community advocates.
“In my career, I want to be able to use compassion. I have seen that everyday this summer my coworkers are compassionate to people who may sometimes be hard to love,” said Shetler. “I want to show people love and care when they might not have it anywhere else.”
As SHECP interns in Austin—and across the country—wrap up their summer, they are preparing to head to the SHECP Frueauff Closing Conference held at Marymount University during the first weekend of August. There, they will be presenting their summer experiences to their peers, faculty and SHECP supporters. Afterwards, new SHECP alumni will head home to take all they have learned back to their colleges—and out into the world.
About the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty: The Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty (SHECP), is a consortium of colleges and universities that are committed to the study of poverty as a complex social problem, by expanding and improving educational opportunities for college students in a wide range of disciplines and career trajectories. SHECP institutions support undergraduates toward a lifetime of professional and civil efforts to diminish poverty and enhance human capability. For more information, please visit ShepherdConsortium.org, or follow us on Twitter at @TheSHECP.
