Type of internship: Open to all, but especially suited to PR or business students.

Description of organization: JDRF is an international non-profit organization that strives to discover a cure for type 1 diabetes by funding research efforts. Too, JDRF provides free resources and a supportive network for those newly diagnosed or already living with type 1 diabetes. The Central Virginia Chapter office is a 10 minute drive from the VCU campus.

Intern responsibilities: The outreach intern will help coordinate and expand three of the community programs that JDRF offers in the Central Virginia area. The Bag of Hope and Adult Type 1 Pak programs provide free “goodie bags” to those newly diagnosed with T1D. Both bags contain tools like a blood sugar monitor and various educational resources. The Bag of Hope, geared towards children, includes a teddy bear and a storybook. The Adult Type 1 Pak includes a book written by Mary Tyler Moore who lives with T1D. The mentor program pairs those newly diagnosed with T1D with a local mentor who is living with the disease.

The outreach intern may support these programs in any the following ways.

• Assemble and deliver Bags of Hope and Adult Type 1 Paks to healthcare facilities and newly-diagnosed individuals and in the Richmond area.
• Locate and reach out to individuals who could benefit from JDRF’s outreach programs.
• Develop and maintain relationships with local healthcare facilities to expand the Bag of Hope and Adult Type 1 Pak programs.
• Follow up with participants to gauge the effectiveness of JDRF’s outreach programs and make appropriate recommendations to staff.
• Maintain spreadsheets and databases of program participants.
• Assist in matching mentors with mentees and training new mentors.

Intern qualifications:

• Current college student in good academic standing.
• Has own vehicle and is able to navigate the local area for deliveries and facility visits.
• Highly organized, outgoing, clean-cut, and able to report to work in business attire.
• Interest in communications, business, healthcare, and/or non-profits.
• Comfortable with some public speaking and phone use.
• At least one year of previous work or internship experience required.
• Intermediate knowledge of Microsoft Excel and Windows platform.

Other information: Unpaid position available immediately. For the right individual, opportunity exists to extend internship period for additional semesters.

Contact: Please email the following materials to Rebecca Morrison at RMorrison@jdrf.org, or fax to (804) 254-8154. Qualified candidates will be contacted to schedule a meet-and-greet at the chapter office.

• a PDF resume.
• a phone number and email address where the intern can be reached.
• a brief statement of interest, including summer availability.
• at minimum, one academic and one professional reference.

RISE BASEBALL is looking for competent and energetic Web Designers and Social Media designers for our unpaid Web Production Internship Program starting June or July of 2013. Inters will have lots of freedom, but are expected to produce professional products. The ideal candidate(s) should be from or accessible to Chesterfield Virginia.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Design and produce current and new website
• Design and produce Social Media sites
• On site photography and digital uploads
• Social Media research and produce campaigns for Facebook
• Organize and archive creative source files, stock photography, HTML / CSS code libraries 

Required Qualifications

• Experience in designing web applications; proficiency in CSS and html web page design.
• Excellent communication skills including both verbal and written abilities.
• Strong skills and experience with any of the following:

1. Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver)
2. Freeway Express
3. Rapid Weaver
4. Word Press

• Strong Communication skills (both verbal and written abilities)
• Team player, that knows how to take direction, but also able to be self-motivated and self-directed, when necessary
• Flexibility in work hours

If you have that creative instinct, enjoy working in a friendly environment and want the chance to be a contributor on cutting-edge, social media and online education websites, creating top-notch web user experiences, please send Chris Martin an email response at hscalumni2011@gmail.com. Make sure you attach your resume, a cover letter, and a cell # as well as e-mail to reach you.

Fisher Budd Ventures, LLC, is a project, brand, and talent management company that currently produces RVA Fashion Week, RVACON, RVA Wake N’ Sun Fest, and Electronica Weekly, as well as manages various music artists.

General job duties of Marketing / Public Relations Interns:

• Engaging and interacting with targeted local, regional and national communities based on the given project assigned.
• Researching and developing press kits, press releases and public service announcements to be delivered via social media.
• Assisting Marketing/PR Director to accommodate any press and/or photog.
• Brainstorming, developing, and executing events that will engage local support, as well as benefit various charities leading up to the start of project.
• Assisting Marketing/PR Director in handling of all print materials, distributing print materials, and assembling street teams.
• Providing general office and project support for Marketing/PR Director.

Qualifications applicants should possess:

• Ability to work in a team environment, as well as work individually.
• Strong writing and speech skills, as well as the ability to multitask under high pressure and maintain deadlines.
• General knowledge and/or interest in Marketing, PR, and Journalism.
• Must be computer savvy and versed in the social media world.
• Should be dressed appropriately and prepared to work in a business.

Internship training includes:

• Daily, evolving, on the field experience in the fashion, music, and entertainment environments (pending project assigned).

This internship is offered year round. Hours are flexible. This is an unpaid internship. Applicants should e-mail resume, two written references and writing samples to:

Jimmy Budd, Owner

E-mail: FisherBudd@gmail.com / Phone 610-291-4424

Johnson Inc. is a full service PR, marketing and communications firm based in Richmond, VA.  Our internship program offers a hands-on learning experience by providing interns with maximum exposure to the day-to-day business of our firm.  Once accepted into our program, interns will be assigned a specific department and an intern coordinator.  Additionally, all interns will get exposed to all our services which include integrated marketing services, public, media and government relations, creative services, project management, web, digital and new media, and event coordination.   For additional information about Johnson Inc. please visit www.johnsonmarketing.com.

Johnson Inc. is dedicated to hiring outstanding talent.  We look for interns that are intelligent, innovative, creative thinkers, diligent workers, focused and leaders.  Interns (sophomore, junior or senior) should have great written and verbal communication skills, be organized/detail oriented and pursuing a degree in communications, public relations, journalism, advertising or marketing.

Internship Opportunities: Summer 2013 (May 31-August 15) for Richmond Jazz Festival www.jazzatmaymont.com

Client Services Intern-Public Relations

• Copywriting, press releases, story development/pitching to media, website copywriting/editing, e-blast copywriting

Digital/New Media Intern-Social Media

• Copywriting, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram-image/copy campaign development, posting and monitoring/analytics

Events Intern-Coordination & Management

• Event planning, logistics management, onsite event coordination, artist relations, marketing and onsite sponsorship activation

Application Process:

Applicants are required to submit a resume, cover letter and answers to short essay questions.  Email the above information to thampton@johnsonmarketing.com

Essay Questions:

1) Please describe how your educational background has prepared you for an internship within the field of PR, advertising and marketing?

2) Describe one internship or job that you’ve recently held, and discuss what you have learned most from the experience?

3) Tell us about a recent team experience you’ve had-a school project, a sports team, a professional team, etc. What role did your play on the team and what did you learn most from the experience of working within a group?

4) What do you hope to gain form an internship at Johnson Inc.?

5) How did you hear about Johnson Inc.? If referred by an employee, please indicate that person’s name and your relationship to that person.

Torrance Hampton / @jilive / @RVAGroovesTV

Creative Director

JI-Digital Strategy & New Media

Amir Vera

VCU journalism major Amir Vera will work at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this summer as part of the prestigious Dow Jones New Fund internship program.

Vera, a rising senior, was among 120 undergraduate and graduate students nationwide selected by the DJNF to work as business reporters, digital journalists, news editors and sports copy editors at the nation’s leading news organizations. The DJNF selected only four college journalists from Virginia. The others are from the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and James Madison University.

Vera will be a copy editor (and he hopes to write some stories) at the Post-Gazette, a daily newspaper serving western Pennsylvania. His 10-week paid internship will begin June 10. While interning in Pittsburgh, Vera has made arrangements to live in a dorm at Point Park University.

Before reporting to the Post-Gazette, Vera will spend a week at a “boot camp” at Pennsylvania State University, where he will hone his copy-editing skills and network with other journalists. John Dillon, a senior lecturer in journalism at Penn State, will direct the training program, formally called the Dow Jones Center for Editing Excellence. Before joining the Penn State faculty, Dillon worked for 32 years as a reporter and editor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch and taught journalism as an adjunct instructor at VCU.

Vera is the first VCU student chosen for the Dow Jones internship program in more than a decade. He noted that the application process was rigorous.

Indeed, Vera applied for the Dow Jones program as a sophomore and was rejected. Perhaps one reason: He hadn’t had much off-campus reporting experience.

“A lot of internship programs judge you based on your experience,” Vera said. So as a sophomore, in Spring 2012, Vera took VCU’s Capital News Service course, in which he wrote state-government stories for publication by news outlets across Virginia. And in Summer 2012, Vera interned as a reporter at the Progress-Index in Petersburg, south of Richmond.

Those experiences gave him strong clips for his Dow Jones application. (He won a regional award from the Society of Professional Journalists for his CNS reporting.) He also had to provide a résumé, recommendations and an essay for the DJNF.

Vera was born in South Carolina. A self-described “Army brat,” he spent much of his childhood overseas – attending school in Germany – because his mother, Digna Vera, was in the military for 20 years. He returned to the United States and graduated in 2010 from Prince George High School, in Prince George County, near Petersburg.

Vera has been active in campus organizations. He is the incoming president of VCU’s SPJ chapter and co-president of the School’s Student Advisory Board. Vera has been a staff writer for the Commonwealth Times and a camera technician for Rams Review, a student-media website about VCU sports. He also has served as an attendant at the Cary Street Gym and a teaching assistant for the Focused Inquiry program.

For the past two years, Vera also has been a counselor and editor for the VCU Scholastic Journalism Workshop, helping high school students learn and polish their reporting and writing skills. Vera himself participated in the workshop while in high school.

“I guess you could say I’ve been going to VCU since I was 17,” he said.

Vera said his dream job is to someday write for Stars & Stripes, the independent newspaper covering the military.

The DJNF summer internship program was launched in 1960. The interns will work at least 10 weeks for salaries starting at $350 per week. They have been placed with news organizations ranging from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times to Patch.com and the San Francisco Chronicle. Interns returning to college receive $1,000 scholarships.

The DJNF received more than 600 applications for this summer’s internships.

Gandzee is a start-up online children’s retail store specializing in styling wardrobe collections.

Candidates must possess superior written and verbal communications skills, have a vested interest in working in the public relations field, and be able to implement social media strategies to drive sales.

This internship opportunity focuses on the public relations and marketing aspects of the company. You will work directly with the public relations department to write press releases and media alerts, develop and pitch media, respond to inquiries and track placements. There are also opportunities to blog, both on our blog and as a guest blogger on other websites. Gandzee is particularly interested in building relationships with bloggers who write about fashion and parenting.

Qualified candidates MUST be strong writers, be confident public speakers and be social media savvy.

Tasks include:

• Writing and editing
• Social media writing/management
• Media relations

Requirements: All candidates are required to submit two writing samples and will be given a writing test as part of the interview process.

Interested candidates email:  Info@Gandzee.com

isportsweb.com connects a large staff of writers, or correspondents into one dedicated platform. Our site was officially launched in late February 2009. Each new student applicant must submit an application as well as sample articles on the team of their choice, if available. The isportsweb staff will then review these and attempt to find the best fit for each student. If approved, a student intern will be presented with a custom Correspondent Agreement, prepared by our in-house legal counsel, Joe White, and then must agree to all terms and sign and date it before they are sent posting instructions.

If you are not interested in writing for credit but still want to join the isportsweb.com team, we are open to that as well.  Multiple openings are available.  To reach us with questions or to apply, simply email contact@isportsweb.com

Why isportsweb.com? This opportunity is unlike any other currently available to students on a widespread level. The selected correspondent(s) will have the opportunity to expose their writing across the country through our various feeds, gain a following, interact with their readers, learn how to write for a publication, post their articles, and be held accountable for their work.

Overview: isportsweb.com is a cutting edge sports information website. At isportsweb.com we have the pulse of the fan in mind and aim to provide them with a fresh and unique perspective on their favorite teams. We do this by combining the skills of a seasoned writer with the passion of a die-hard fan. We provide a fresh and compelling inside guide to the world of sports news and the athletes who make it great. Our readers are obsessed with sports and their favorite teams. isportsweb.com gives fans the latest buzz on all the hot topics by assigning interns to be team specific ‘beat writers’ for as many teams as possible.

Mission: isportsweb.com is committed to continuing its tremendous growth and becoming a leader in sports information on the web. We have developed a dynamic internship program that we feel your students could benefit greatly from. isportsweb.com is passionate about becoming the first purely intern-driven sports website in the nation. To be able to provide this unique opportunity to your students would give us great joy. We strive to be able to grant team access to each of our correspondents so that we can be the first stop, and the last stop, for team-based coverage on the Internet.

Coverage: We are covering 6 major sports: NCAA Basketball and Football, MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL. We also cover other areas of interest such as horse racing and NASCAR. isportsweb.com is also affiliated with Yardbarker.com/FoxSports.com and feeds into many major national feeds. This is further increasing our exposure to readers across the country.

Management: isportsweb.com’s management team is comprised of the 2 founders; Rob White and Joe White, who serve in multiple capacities. We service the website on the back-end through updates, modifications and enhancements. We also serve as the editorial team, the hiring department, the customer service team, and the media relations department alongside our Internship Development team of James Edwards and Scott Peceny.

Bethany Starin and her husband, Jared

Bethany Emerson Starin, Class of 2008, won the $10,000 first prize in the 2012 Amy Writing Awards for her feature article, “Forged through Fire: A Story of Forgiveness,” which had been published by a Maryland magazine.

The story, published in April 2012 by the alternative monthly Frederick Gorilla, profiles a man who had been a cocaine addict and the victim of an assault that severely burned his face and upper body. The article explains how Darryl Lafratte’s Christian faith helped him turn his life around.

The Amy Writing Awards “recognize creative, skillful writing that applies in a sensitive, thought-provoking manner the biblical principles to issues affecting the world today.”

Starin, who won the School of Mass Communications’ Mac Fac Plaque as the most promising print-journalism graduate in May 2008, flew to Lansing, Mich., where the Amy Foundation is based. She attended a dinner with the Amy Foundation Advisory Committee and special friends on May 7. The following day, at the Michigan Prayer Breakfast, Starin received the award and check.

Starin said she was “selected from a talented pool of writers — it was such an honor to receive the award.”

“At both the breakfast and the dinner, I was able to share how my passion for writing began on a trip to India in 2005-2006,” Starin said. During that trip, she taught English at a nonprofit organization, Love-N-Care Ministries, for nine weeks.

“It was during that time that I realized my passion was not for teaching so much as it was to tell stories about true people — unsung heroes that the world would not otherwise know unless I told their stories. Darryl Lafratte (the man I profiled in my piece) was one of those unsung heroes that I wrote about. This type of story is what I’m passionate about continuing to write,” Starin said.

Starin moved to Maryland in March 2011 and is the managing editor of The Town Courier, a monthly newspaper in Urbana, Md. She also works as a freelance journalist and photographer. The award-winning story came about when an editor at the Frederick Gorilla called to offer her a choice of assignments: a feature on a local car dealer or a story about Lafratte. She took the latter.

“Being a person of faith myself, that one kind of jumped out at me,” Starin said.

There was, however, a problem: Lafratte initially didn’t want his story told. Starin said it took her a few weeks before Lafratte would agree to an interview.

“I had to build a rapport with this guy, work with him and gain his trust before he would open up to me,” Starin said.

Then she had to check out and augment Lafratte’s information with information from law enforcement officials and members of his family. The result was a 2,800-word portrait of Lafratte, who comes to forgive the man who set him on fire.

Starin said she entered the piece in the Amy Writing Awards competition on a lark — and forgot about it until she received a notice that she was a finalist.

“Getting this award is a huge encouragement in my career,” Starin said.

WorldNomads.com in conjunction with National Geographic Channel are offering one talented individual the chance to be mentored by National Geographic photographer, Jason Edwards, one of the world’s leading wildlife and remote landscape photographers.

The scholarship recipient will go on assignment to photograph the rugged landscapes of Greenland – from exploring the Russell Glacier and the Eternity Fjord to searching for musk oxen (and shy reindeer!) to visiting a local settlement.

On location, they will have the opportunity to learn the ropes from a globally renowned Nat Geo photographer and find out why Greenland has been beckoning intrepid spirits for thousands of years.

The winner of the scholarship will be flown to Nuuk, Greenland from their country of residence courtesy of World Nomads and Air Greenland to embark on an 10-day custom trip with Visit Greenland and Destination Arctic Circle.

Applicants for the scholarship must submit a photo essay that tells a story about a place they have visited and tell us about their photos and themselves, and why they should be awarded the 2013 Travel Photography Scholarship to Greenland.

All interested students should visit the WorldNomads.com Scholarship page for more information.

The deadline for entry is July 5, 2013.

Kind Regards,

Alicia Smith
PROGRAMS MARKETING MANAGER

The College of Humanities and Sciences is seeking a part-time, hourly Marketing Assistant. The Marketing Assistant reports to the Director of Communications. This is a part-time position with a wide range of responsibilities focused on publicizing news and events for the College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS) and the academic units within the College.

The Marketing Assistant will need to collaborate effectively with University Relations, VCU News, Technology Services, the Dean’s staff and school and department chairs within the College of Humanities and Sciences. The Marketing Assistant will provide leadership and coordination in the planning, development and implementation of strategic communications initiatives. The Marketing Assistant will work to build and sustain connections among many constituent groups, including        students, alumni, faculty and staff.

Duties and Responsibilities

The responsibilities will include:

• Create blog posts about news and upcoming events.
• Add events to the VCU Calendar, the CHS Calendar, TelegRAM, and other local arts and events calendars as needed.
• Develop strategies to publicize CHS events to targeted audiences.
• Assist with the creation of faculty/staff email newsletters and emails.
• Update our alumni blog with profiles and photographs.
• Assist with the coordination of direct mail campaigns.

• Maintain a College of Humanities and Sciences calendar of events and share it in a timely manner with the Director of Communications, the Dean and his staff, and Department heads.

• Coordinate mailings to organizations outside VCU for selected events.
• Manage postings to social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumble and YouTube.
• Research and implement ways to increase the reach of social media content.
• Integrate content across various social media platforms using Hootsuite.
• Other duties as assigned

The successful candidate should have excellent communications skills with experience in a variety of technologies. Other required skills include:

• Excellent and demonstrated proofreading/editing skills.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel)
• Proficiency with WordPress Content Management System
• Proficiency in Adobe Photoshop
• Familiarity with a wide range of social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Hootsuite
• Ability to handle multiple tasks
• Ability to work on deadline
• Ability to work alone as well as part of a team
• Ability to work well with a variety of people in a diverse environment.

Other desired skills:

• Familiarity with website design concepts
• Familiarity with VCU policies
• Availability to attend occasional CHS events in the evening or on weekends.

This position is part-time, 16-24 hours per week with the schedule to be determined. Our office is located at 826 West Franklin Street, in the heart of the VCU campus.

Please email a resume and references to:

Gregg Johnson
Director of Communications
VCU College of Humanities and Sciences
grjohnson@vcu.edu.

Virginia Commonwealth University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.  Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

Revised May 16, 2013