Interdisciplinary Internships

Experience: Purdue Student Farm Summer Internship

Description: The Purdue Student Farm is a small, sustainable farm managed by the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture (HLA). The farm is a large outdoor lab located near the Kampen Golf Course and Daniel Turf Center off Cherry Lane. We grow beautiful vegetables and herbs using the principles that naturally govern balanced ecosystems. We also emphasize the education of our undergraduate students through sustainable farming methods and run a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) program serving 150 members. Farm work is seasonal and highly weather-dependent, so every day is different! In the spring, there is lots of indoor greenhouse work, seeding and growing transplants, and prepping hoop house beds. Come summer, there is lots of outdoor planting, weeding, watering, and the beginning of harvest. During this internship, you will learn: 1. How food can be grown effectively on a small scale 2. How food can and should be marketed for profit 3. How food utilization can affect the farmer and community 4. How food intersects with the economy and the environment Come and join us in 2025!

Campus: West Lafayette

Number of Students Needed: 2

This experience will occur: May, June, July, August

Send resumes to: Director, Purdue Student Farm, Petrus Langenhoven, plangenh@purdue.edu

Experience: Purdue CDF Freedom School Program at First Church

Description: The Purdue CDF Freedom School Program is a free six-week, literacy-based summer program for students in grades K-5. The mornings are dedicated to the integrated reading curriculum and afternoons consist of various activities including STEM engagement, field trips, and social action activities. Freedom School encourages a love of reading and learning through a culturally diverse curriculum. The Integrated Reading Curriculum affirms our scholars with engaging literature and exposure to the broader community. During the six weeks, we also encourage the parents of our scholars to be engaged in their child’s learning through parent empowerment sessions in the summer and multiple volunteer opportunities. We hire college-aged students (Servant Leader Interns) to teach and mentor our scholars in classrooms with a 1:10 teacher to student ratio. They will attend local training (throughout Spring 2025 and in May) and a national training (in June 3rd-8th) prior to the start of the six week summer literacy program. Compensation starts at $4,000 depending on experience within the program.

Campus: West Lafayette

Number of Students Needed: 7

This experience will occur: June, July

Send resumes to: Project Director, Sara Luo, luo446@purdue.edu

Experience: Purdue University Research Experience in Toxicology (PURE-Tox)

Description: The goal of this program is to help students develop basic and transferable research, professional, and career skills. Students will be matched with a research mentor. Most of the student’s time will be spent conducting research in their matched toxicology laboratory. Students will also participate in a weekly seminar series covering research and career development topics. Research topics include basic toxicology principles, ongoing research projects, journal clubs, and introduction to technologies/methodology. Career development topics include responsible conduct of research, graduate school application processes, careers in toxicology, presentation skills, abstract writing, and others. Community-building events will be interspersed throughout the program. The summer program will culminate in a research seminar where students will present their research findings. Following the presentations, there will be a social mixer attended by students, mentors, laboratory personnel (graduate students), toxicology faculty, and our toxicology program alumni. Students will be encouraged and assisted with submitting abstracts for regional and national Society of Toxicology (SOT) meetings.

Campus: West Lafayette

Number of Students Needed: 6

This experience will occur: May, June, July

Send resumes to: Radiation and Environmental Health Program Coordinator, Alison Roth, roth5@purdue.edu

Experience: Research Communication

Description: This is an internship to develop translational communications about faculty research in the Department of Political Science. The student will be responsible for developing short summaries of research products and broader stories about research areas for our website. The intern will also help to create a research communication plan for the department and create short social media posts. They will interact with faculty and staff as they learn about the many topics that are part of our research portfolio.

Campus: West Lafayette

Number of Students Needed: 1

This experience will occur: May, June

Send resumes to: Department Operations Manager, Kelly Thornburg, kthornbu@purdue.edu

Experience: Amphibian disease ecology internship

Description: This position will involve assisting with research on the ecology of infectious disease in amphibians. We are trying to understand what predicts fungal infection in amphibians, how communities vary in disease risk, and how pathogens affect individuals, species, and communities through time. Both field work at local ponds and wetlands and lab work would occur. The exact time frame is flexible.

Campus: West Lafayette

Number of Students Needed: 1-2

This experience will occur: May, June, July, August

Send resumes to: Dr. Catherine Searle, searlec@purdue.edu

Experience: Explainable AI for Enhanced Network Intrusion Detection

Description: The main objective of network intrusion detection tasks is to detect unauthorized access, misuse, and exploitation of computer networks. With the rapid evolution of cyber-intrusions on modern networked systems, there is a need for developing advanced artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for enhancing network intrusion detection tasks. However, there is no single AI model that is uniformly better than all other AI models for all network intrusion detection tasks where each model has its own limitations, including high rate of false alerts, high rate of false negatives, and other performance issues. Furthermore, the decision-making of these models is black-box and not well understandable. My research objective is to develop rigorous explainable AI approaches for improving AI-based network intrusion detection tasks. In particular, I am interested in designing and evaluating XAI frameworks for enhancing network intrusion detection tasks.

Campus: Indianapolis

Number of Students Needed: 2

This experience will occur: July, August

Send resumes to: Assistant Professor, Mustafa Abdallah, abdalla0@purdu.edu

Experience: PSUB Summer Stay Intern

Description: The Purdue Student Union Board is looking for three interns this Summer to support campus-wide programming for Student Life and the Office of Summer and Winter Sessions. Through this opportunity students will get experience in an office setting with responsibilities such as, event planning, budgeting, marketing and more. They will also get hands-on experience of working and organizing events. We are also looking for a student with photography background/skills if applicable.

Campus: West Lafayette

Number of Students Needed: 3

This experience will occur: May, June, July

Send resumes to: Assistant Director of Programs and Engagement, Mikayla Woodward, mqwoodwa@purdue.edu

Experience: Peer Mentor – Office of Summer and Winter Sessions

Description: The Peer Mentor role is an integral part of the experience of a new student. Peer mentoring is a form of mentorship that usually takes place between a person who has lived through a specific experience and a person who is new to that experience. The primary duty of the peer mentor is to foster new student growth and development through creating a safe learning environment where all students know they are valued. Successful peer mentors demonstrate a commitment to service, good interpersonal and communication skills, a genuine desire to help students, and be self-motivated with a positive attitude. Click here to view the full job description.

Campus: West Lafayette and Indianapolis

Number of Students Needed: 100 West Lafayette and 10 Indianapolis

This experience will occur: June, July, August

To apply for this position click on this link. The application for this experience will close on February 9.

Experience: Intern – Office of Summer and Winter Sessions

Description: Intern primary duties in the summer will consist of helping the Office of Summer and Winter Sessions professional staff to implement summer programming initiatives, involving Summer College for High School (SMHS) and New Beginners (Early Start (ES)). Click here to view the full job description.

Campus: West Lafayette 

Number of Students Needed: 2-4 West Lafayette

This experience will occur: June, July, August

West Lafayette applicants send resumes to: Associate Director, Dr. Sean Dufault, thinksummer@purdue.edu