Partner with the Green Devil Program
The Office of Climate and Sustainability’s Green Devil intern program connects passionate, highly skilled undergraduate and graduate students with community members within and beyond Duke to help them meet their climate and sustainability goals. Please contact Office of Climate and Sustainability Engagement Coordinator Sophia Masciarelli (asm133@duke.edu) with any questions about the Green Devil Internship program.
Green Devil Program Mission
The Green Devil intern program aims to advance student leadership in sustainability by bridging the gap between awareness and action while also cultivating a commitment to our future at Duke and beyond.
Green Devils work to educate and empower the Duke and Durham community to create a more sustainable future through social, economic, and environmental change. They also act as a liaison between the student body, community, and institution to drive systemic sustainability progress and shift campus sustainability culture through education and advocacy efforts.
Benefits to hosting a Green Devil Internship
As a Green Devil supervisor, you can engage skilled and enthusiastic Duke students to work on projects that help support your organization’s sustainability and climate goals.
- Internship pay is 100% funded by the Office of Climate and Sustainability
- Increased bandwidth and fresh ideas
- An opportunity to provide professional mentorship to a motivated and skilled student
- Access to a diverse pool of applicants at Duke
- Involvement in a collaborative partnership with Duke’s Office of Climate and Sustainability to advance positive change for climate and sustainability
Qualifications of Ideal Green Devil Internship positions
- Span 5-10 hours of work per week over the course of an academic year (roughly August-May) with deliverables that are manageable within allotted work hours .
- Foster a mentor relationship between the supervisor and student intern, providing project-based guidance as well as preparing students for future careers.
- Align with the goals of Duke's Climate Commitment that advance the Commitment’s mission toward education, sustainable operations, community partnerships, research, and external engagement.
- Offer hands-on, applied learning experiences that invite students to address real-world sustainability and climate change challenges at Duke University and in Duke’s neighboring communities in a non-extractive and co-creative way. Tangible learning outcomes are preferred over routine clerical work.
- Situate Duke students to be strong leaders and effective drivers of local sustainability progress.
Examples of Internships
This position supports the coordination of facilitated Duke in the Gardens programs for Duke students, faculty, and staff. Duke in the Gardens programs connect Duke audiences with Duke Gardens' resources to learn from this place & each other. Participating groups are most often academic classes or student groups, but can also be faculty or staff groups. Each program is typically something a group attends once, on a day & time they request. There are four Duke in the Gardens programs. Three of the programs combine a tour of the Gardens with facilitated conversation & observation activities on a particular theme: Grounding in the Gardens (land relationships), Queer Ecologies for Community, and Rooted Responses to Climate Change. The fourth program, Gardens Orientation, gives groups an overview of Duke Gardens and is otherwise responsive to participants’ interests and questions. Starting in Fall 2024, Duke in the Gardens programs will be led by University Program Guides, who are volunteers or student workers trained in facilitating these specific programs.
This intern supports The School for Living Futures (SfLF), an interdisciplinary, experimental organization in Durham dedicated to creating new knowledge and possibility for our climate-changed future. Since their founding in 2022, SfLF has become a hub for programming and projects that combine art, climate work, kinship and community, and that bring together the knowledge of artists, healers, scientists, activists, ancestral wisdom holders, scholars, designers, and storytellers.
The Video Media Intern helps build the public archive of video content and other digital resources to make it more engaging and accessible to the public. Tasks include working with video files and photos from past events and editing them into a selection of shorter videos (highlights and topical compilations) for web archive, YouTube, and social media, as well as creating other digital learning resources to accompany the video content. The goal is to offer a range of informative, inspiring, and climate-engaged educational content that the public can easily access and utilize. Other responsibilities include bi-monthly (every other week) progress meetings with the Director of SfLF, and possible participation in weekly team meetings and quarterly board meetings.
This position will support Duke Dining on one or more sustainability projects. Students of all disciplines are encouraged to apply since the work will depend on skills, experience, and interest of the intern. Potential projects could include, but are not limited to, one of the following areas:
- Local and sustainable procurement- develop a dashboard to track purchasing or creation of marketing and outreach materials
- Reusable container program- data collection, stakeholder engagement, and or project design
- Hydroponics- operational planning and/or creating educational materials on the topic
- Climate-friendly dining- alternative protein research or climate labeling program research
A relatively new initiative on campus, Say the Thing is an emerging portfolio of programs which centers storytelling, moral agency, student self-efficacy, and the values of circularity. A collaboration between the Duke Chapel and the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Say the Thing is bold; and our Lark events are no exception. Whether screenprinting new images over top of old logos on thrited/deadstock t-shirts, or blacking out words on old pages to produce new poetry, or stamping images of greats like Beyonce on old sheets of Beethoven–Lark popup events infuse fun, whimsy, beauty, meaning, and sustainability into the quotidian student day. Last year, Say the Thing, saved so much trash through facilitated popup Lark events in which over 2,000 members of the Duke community transfigured landfill-fated materials into artful treasure.
Say the Thing Lark Circularity Interns
- Identify and audit trash from across campus that might serve as potential Lark materials
- Develop systems to operationalize the mapping, reception, and storage of said materials
- Help coordinate and execute the popup Lark events.
The responsibilities of this position range from researching, mapping and interacting with various campus stakeholders to coordinating pop-up events including planning, conducting marketing, managing volunteers, and executing the events day-of.
How it works
Potential Green Devil Project Supervisors will:
- Develop and submit an internship proposal by 5pm on March 14th, 2025 (for participation in the 2025-26 academic year)
- Review applicants alongside Office of Climate and Sustainability staff, interview short-listed candidates, and select a candidate
- Function as a mentor to guide and advise the Green Devil over the course of the project
- Attend a Green Devil supervisor orientation meeting and review the Supervisor Handbook
The Office of Climate and Sustainability Engagement Coordinator will:
- Promote internships to Duke students at across a wide range of academic disciplines
- Manage and shortlist student applications
- Onboard selected intern candidates into the Duke HR system, manage timecards and payroll throughout the internship
- Deliver a program orientation and project management workshop to all Green Devils in August, near the first day of class
- Facilitate a cohort experience for all interns that includes professional development, team building, and shared learning opportunities
- Provide ongoing administrative and program management support throughout the duration of the project
- Host an end-of-year event for students to showcase progress and outcomes at the conclusion of the internship
- Offer ongoing media and communications support to promote the internship program, our partners, and the outcomes of Green Devil projects
Interested?
We would love to discuss your ideas for a Green Devil internship. Please feel welcomed to connect with Office of Climate and Sustainability Engagement Coordinator Sophia Masciarelli (asm133@duke.edu) and we can find a time to meet. Please submit a proposal by 5pm on Friday, March 14th, 2025.