PICS expands to offer 167 paid summer internships

The Princeton Internships in Civic Service alumni initiative has managed to nearly double its number of opportunities in the past two years to offer 167 internships in the summer of 2016.

PICS provided 114 internships in the summer of 2015 and 93 in the summer of 2014.

“A lot of hard work went into making this expansion possible,” Chairman of the PICS Board Chuck Freyer ’69 said of the jump to 167 internships for summer 2016. “Our team puts in thousands of hours each year to make opportunities like these happen.”

These internships cover a wide range of endeavors in both national and international organizations, Freyer said.

Freyer added that PICS has enlarged its arsenal to encompass internships in the fields of journalism, government and the arts. Traditionally, students had the opportunity to work in group advocacy, legal services, the environment, health and social services, community development and education. These new fields were chosen based on demonstrated student interest, and the engagements of the alumni contacted through the expanded PICS outreach efforts, Freyer said.

Prior to expansion, PICS had been known as the Class of 1969 Community Service Fund, and was composed almost entirely of Class of 1969 members who had founded it, Freyer explained. The first step to program expansion required a reorganization of the PICS board, he said.

“We needed to develop involvement with a greater number of alumni classes,” Freyer said.

The program’s name was then changed to Princeton Internships in Civic Service in 2007 as the board began reaching out to other classes to join and support the program, Freyer said. The board then networked with alumni through groups such as Princeton regional associations and partner classes.

As a result of this effort to engage alumni support, PICS now has eight different alumni classes serving on the program board, spanning from the class of 1967 to the class of 2006, Freyer noted. Likewise, PICS currently has five different classes serving as program partners — meaning that they help to sponsor one or more interns.

Freyer also explained that the Community Service Fund partnered with the Pace Center for Civic Engagement to support PICS in May 2010. By partnering with the Pace Center, the program expected to increase the number of internship opportunities available for undergraduates, while simultaneously broadening the outreach to Princeton alumni with a commitment to civic engagement, he explained. Pace has since served as a gateway through which students will become part of the PICS program.

The two main obstacles to expansion, Freyer said, were what he called “inertial resistance” and fundraising. He explained that the program had plateaued at an offering of about 75 internships for the four or five years prior to expansion, and because the board was comfortable with this number, it was initially challenging to move beyond this established norm and overcome what he described as “inertial resistance.” To overcome the “inertial resistance,” the board needed funds, he said.

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Executive Director Seva Kramer retired in 2012, having been with the program since its conception in 1996, Freyer said. Kramer was replaced by Jeri Schaefer, who has served as Executive Director ever since.

“Jeri came in as executive director with a skill set which included fundraising,” Freyer said. “Fundraising being a crucial requirement for growth.”

With a diverse board and an executive director with fundraising experience, PICS was ready to begin its journey towards expansion, he said.

Freyer explained that he proposed the goal of doubling the number of available PICS internship opportunities during a strategic board retreat meeting in 2013, noting that the roughly 75 internships PICS fielded annually at the time met the demand of only about 15 percent of the application pool. Freyer said he wanted to see the program include approximately 150 internships by the summer of 2016.

“I don’t think anybody really believed we could do it,” Freyer said. “But we accepted the challenge anyways.”

The internships are approximately divided on a one-third, to one-third, to one-third ratio between rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors, Freyer noted.

“I think the PICS expansion is great for students who want to explore careers in civic service,” Berthy Feng ’19 said. “I really hope that I will be able to take advantage of these awesome new opportunities.” Schaefer said that there are various challenges and opportunities that accompany this expansion.

She noted that PICS does not receive funding from the University, and that the majority of funds come from generous alumni and the organizations that field the program’s interns. Funding is a principal concern, she said, since PICS internships are paid, enabling every student, regardless of financial background, to participate in the career investigation opportunities. In order to meet the increased financial demands of expansion, the board reached out to long-time community partners and asked them to work with PICS to co-fund the internships.

“We are working at the height of our capacity to handle the number of internships that we currently provide,” Schaefer said.

Increasing PICS staffing to meet the increased workload of managing these internships, as well as tackling an increased application pool, is entirely contingent upon fundraising capacities, Schaefer added.

Schaefer explained that she formed the Student Advisory Council in 2012 with the intent of integrating student voices to provide feedback for the actions of the board and raising awareness of the new internship opportunities PICS offers. She said that the Student Advisory Council, under the oversight of her and PICS and Pace Center program coordinator Evan Schneider, has taken on the large role of publicizing PICS to the undergraduate community, including door-knocking campaigns and events organized on campus. She added that all former interns who are still members of the University undergraduate community have been encouraged to reach out to friends and affiliates, often through class social media sites.

Schneider deferred comment to Schaefer.

Christie Jiang ’17, who did a PICS internship during the summer of 2014 working for a non-profit in Trenton called Isles, Inc., said that the most valuable part of the PICS program is the student’s ability to gain an appreciation for how difficult, yet rewarding, non-profit work can be.

“The PICS program is really special because it creates funding opportunities for programs that might typically be unpaid internships,” Jiang said.

Jiang said her only qualm with the PICS program was that, at the time she was applying in 2014, most of the offered internships seemed to fall under legal and medical categories.

“I think that with the recent expansion, the PICS coordinators have sought to resolve this issue by bringing in a more diverse set of options,” she said.

Freyer said that the ultimate objective of the PICS program is to provide opportunities for undergraduates at the University to experience the rewards and benefits of working in the service and non-profit sectors, and that the board is gratified when an intern decides as a result of their PICS experience to pursue a career in the non-profit sector right after graduation.

“Our hope,” he continued, “is that these experiences will encourage the interns, after they graduate, to serve one or more non-profits as a board member or in some other capacity while pursuing their careers.”