Student internships in emergency management aren’t hard to come by or create, but you may need some help to find an internship if a program isn’t well-known to your university’s meteorology program. Here are some quick tips to use to locate internship opportunities:
Your university’s office of public safety or emergency management is a great place to start. It’s likely that professors within your meteorology department are able to connect you with the staff within your university’s public safety department. If no contacts are known, search your university’s website for keywords “emergency” or “public safety”. You may alternatively reach out to your town or city’s fire or police department via non-emergency means if you are unable to locate a good contact..
The International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) job’s board displays vacancies for full-time, part-time, and intern positions across the nation. It can be found at https://jobs.iaem.org/jobs/.
When emailing an internship point-of-contact about applying for or creating an internship, try to be concise and include your resume along with a cover letter. Emergency managers and safety officials are especially time conscious and a concise email may be easier for them to quickly read and respond to.
While crafting your resume and cover letter, make sure to emphasize any online FEMA Independent Study (IS) courses that you’ve taken, any communications courses, and other skills that may be useful inside of a public safety environment, like technical writing.