Summer and Fall 2014 Virtual Internship Opportunities
Envisioning History, an educational non-profit in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has Summer and Fall Semester internship opportunities for undergraduates to process electronic historical data into an advanced geospatial database. The subject of the historical material is World War II; the interns’ work product will help populate a database with thousands of documents, media files, events, people, organizations, tactical and strategic government decisions, etc. The database—which essentially works like Google Earth with a time dimension added—will soon be available for undergraduate and graduate level historical research.
Envisioning History works with universities to allow interns to obtain academic credit for their work, where the university allows this. Usually 50 hours of internship work equals 1 credit hour, or more typically 150 hours of internship work equals 3 credit hours. In order to obtain credit, formal arrangements must be made with the university before the internship begins. Envisioning History has standard formats for making these arrangements – what the prospective intern must do is put us in touch with the appropriate Professor or Department Head.
Nature of the Work:
- Interns will process digitized primary source reports, documents and media from World War II, will plot geo-coordinates of events and will cross-tag the documents with the associated events, ships, military units, people, etc.
- Training in use of the software (currently in wide use by the U.S. and other NATO military and intelligence organizations) will be provided. If you can use Google Earth, you can easily handle this software.
- Work can be done from any location with a reasonably fast internet connection.
- Working with Envisioning History and their sponsoring Professors at the beginning of the Internship, Interns will set weekly progress goals and Envisioning History will send a summary progress report to the sponsor.
- Students may be given a choice of areas of WWII history to work with, such as the Central Pacific Campaign (Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc.), the US return to the Philippines, The Battle of the Bulge, the Eastern Front, etc. Students who have a particular interest should make that clear when they apply, although we cannot guarantee everyone’s choices. There will be some outside reading required to familiarize you with the assigned subject area.
Requirements:
- Undergraduate history and geography majors will be given preference, although others may apply.
- Interns will be required to provide their own laptop or desktop computer, preferably with a mouse with a scroll wheel. PCs work better than Apple products with this software platform.
- Interns should have strong self discipline skills, as they will work when they choose without direct supervision. Their work will be reviewed before it is published into the database.
Benefits:
- Interns will obtain practical experience in the use of an advanced geospatial database and will be able to retain a database account for their own studies and research during the academic year and beyond.
- Interns will develop a detailed sense of how historical relationships develop and persist between people, places and things.
- Interns will learn details of the military, technological and economic events of World War II
- Opportunities for further graduate-level fellowships may be available, depending on the proficiency the intern develops.
If you are interested in an Internship, please contact Dr. Jeffrey McClurken (jmcclurk@umw.edu) for more information. For application, e-mail a brief summary of your qualifications and assessment of your computer skills to: rick.ector@envisioninghistory.org.
