Get Experience scholarship
The Get Experience scholarship was established to support student engagement in hands-on learning experiences that enhance and compliment their academic coursework.
Sometimes students find compelling opportunities to explore career fields and build advance career readiness in places where their contributions are unpaid or underpaid. This can create significant barriers for students to take advantage of these career and professional development opportunities. The Get Experience scholarships are intended to reduce wage gap barriers.
What do we fund?
We fund the following types of experiences:
- Career-related experience located in not-for-profit, education, and governmental organizations. (We cannot fund experiences located in for-profit businesses at this time.)
- Career-related experience supervised by a staff member at the organization. (The experience does not need to be labeled an “internship”.)
- Undergraduate research experience supervised by a Principal Investigator, post-doc staff, or faculty member.
- Volunteer experience supervised by a staff member at the organization.
- Remote experience supervised by a staff member at the organization.
The following types of experiences are not eligible for funding:
- Fee-based programs - any program that charges tuition or a fee.
- Personal research projects, such as an honors thesis, senior thesis, independent study, personal projects, or personal entrepreneurial ventures.
- Work or research projects attached to academic courses or credit (except the LAS 289 Internships or LAS 302 Internships courses that are specifically designed to support programs like the Get Experience Scholarship).
- Pipeline or insight programs which are meant to expose a student to a company, but where the student does not produce a work product.
- Student or student-run entrepreneurial ventures.
- Projects related to student organizations.
- Summer courses at Illinois or elsewhere.
- Any experience supervised by another student.
- Work at an organization owned by a family member, or where a student is directly supervised by a family member (including, but not limited to, parent, sibling, spouse, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or cousin).
Scholarships are available during the fall, spring, and summer terms. Students may only receive the Get Experience Scholarship (previously called the “Life + Career Design Scholarship) one time in their undergraduate program – in one academic term, to support one experience.
Who is eligible?
The scholarships promote early engagement career readiness. To qualify, you must meet the following requirements:
- Be a College of LAS bachelor’s degree-seeking student in good academic standing.
- Be actively working toward your LAS degree.
Please note that students who graduate prior to the start date of their internship or professional experience are not eligible to receive the scholarship.
- Be engaging in a hands-on, experiential learning experience that is unpaid or underpaid.
Please note that underpaid is defined as earning less than Illinois minimum wage, which is currently defined as $15/hour.
- Be participating in an experience that dedicates at least 60 hours of time over a prolonged engagement.
For example: Engaging in a fall or spring semester experience that spans at least 10 weeks, at a minimum of 6 hours/week; OR a summer experience that spans at least 6 weeks at a minimum of 10 hours per week.
- Have received a written offer for the unpaid internship, externship, volunteer experience, undergraduate research experience, etc.
This written offer can be in the form of a letter or email. It should communicate your employing organization and role at a minimum. It may also include start date, hours per week, remote/in-person/hybrid work, indication of stipend or other forms of support, etc.