Graduate Student Internships at EPA and NIEHS

Program Overview

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have a partnership that provides between 10 and 18 internships at the EPA Library and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Library each year. Over the past 30 years, more than 300 SILS students have begun their professional careers at the EPA and NIEHS libraries. The internship program provides students with both the opportunity to apply concepts and ideas taught in the classroom to real-world library situations as well as the chance to gain professional level experience.

Each semester, the EPA-RTP Main Library internship provides Master's students the opportunity to rotate through a different area of the library. Rotations include interlibrary loan, reference, cataloging, online searching, and serving as the librarian for the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards Library Services.

Through the SILS internship program, the NIEHS Library provides professional level experience to students in the areas of reference, serials management, and cataloging. In turn, the library receives a high level of work from the interns, and gets refreshed with new ideas every year.

Interns at both libraries work twenty hours each week for one year. Students must be enrolled at the Master's degree level at a local library science or information science program for a minimum of nine credit hours each fall and spring semester to maintain eligibility for the internship. Students may not hold any other graduate assistantship concurrently.