The GEL Impactship Program connects GEL students with a special type of engineering internship opportunity.

These “engineering impactships,” as we call them, represent a collaborative effort between GEL and engineering employers to create highly developmental, engaging, and challenging summer internships that center upon the following three themes.

Impactships will:

1. Offer high-impact assignment opportunities to participants, as marked by:

• Participants see the “big picture” of how their work contributes to company success
• Assignments offer practice in Capabilities of Effective Engineering Leaders
• The output of the assignment will be of tangible value to the company

2. Offer serious responsibility to participants, such as (but not limited to):

• Presenting to senior stakeholders
• Possession of schedule or budgetary responsibility on a project
• Being tasked with leading a small team or coordinating the efforts of others

3. Pair committed and passionate sponsors (e.g., internal mentors) with participants. Such sponsors:

• Have several years’ experience in their field
• Possess a balance of strong technical skills and social/interpersonal skills
• Are viewed as high-potential technical leaders by the company
• Most importantly: are excited (and able) to commit substantive time to a mentoring relationship 

You may be thinking: these things sound great, but don’t other internship programs already offer similar characteristics?  We hope that is true – after all, these are best-practice features of internship programs. Unfortunately, such features are not universal. A difference here is that GEL actively seeks and partners with employers to cultivate such opportunities, and uniquely identifies the opportunities for you. Further, GEL is involved in facilitating pre-/post- Impactship goal-setting and reflection for students. You are invited to view the guidelines that GEL and Employers established to shape the development of Impactships.

During this pilot year, approximately a half-dozen Impactship positions will be presented exclusively to active GEL students; we plan to expand the number of opportunities in future years. Meanwhile, we hope you’ll strongly consider applying to one of this year’s pilot Impactship opportunities.