GradFUTURES Fellowships/Internships provide graduate students with an opportunity to apply discipline-specific skills, gain interdisciplinary project team experience, and contribute to a nonprofit organization's social-impact mission. Students receive one-on-one mentoring and coaching, gain exposure to organizational dynamics and leadership strategies via shadowing and participating in meetings and/or presentations. Host organizations work closely with the Graduate School to determine the learning outcomes and professional development goals for these immersive experiences. The expectation is that the fellowship will be mutually beneficial and host organizations will benefit from the diverse ideas of graduate students in conjunction with meaningful project deliverables to address local, regional, national and global challenges.

Fellowships vary in length, each lasting for a mutually agreeable and pre-determined number of weeks during the summer or academic year, and for a pre-determined number of hours over the course of this period of time week. The Graduate School provides the fellow/intern with a stipend to fund this immersive experience. (Note that this is viewed as a fellowship for funding consideration. The term fellow/intern is used interchangeably here because the title may vary at individual organizations.)