The Office of Veteran and Military Affairs (OVMA) Student Veteran Undergraduate Internship Award is open for applications from Oct. 1 to May 31. This award provides up to $5,000 in financial assistance to undergraduate student veterans who are attending Syracuse University and interested in pursuing an internship over the summer semester. Student veterans can apply through Handshake.

This is a need-based award. Applications will be evaluated on how the funds requested will impact a student veteran’s ability to participate in the internship. The award can help offset the cost of travel, living expenses or tuition.

The first-ever awardee, Dustin Hall, says the Student Veteran Undergraduate Internship Award enabled him to participate in an internship last summer with OneGroup, an industry-leading risk management, insurance brokerage and employee benefits firm.

“As a student veteran, we’re not the typical college-aged students,” says Hall. “When I was looking at internships, I found a lot of great opportunities. However, I have bills and it was actually a challenge to find an internship where I could get by over the summer.”

Dustin Hall received the first Student Veteran Undergraduate Internship Award from the Office of Veteran and Military Affairs. Hall says the award was “a game-changer.”

“Not only was I getting college credit, but I was also getting funds that could sustain me through the 2 1/2 months of the internship,” says Hall. The award removed the complexity of holding down a second job to supplement his income. “I was able to not be so stressed about the money and just focus on the experience of the internship and making connections,” Hall says.

OVMA established the Internship Award in 2020 to eliminate the financial barriers that impede student veterans from participating in internships.  Jennifer Pluta, the assistant director of Veteran Career Services, first looked at the University’s student veterans and found that only 6 to 8 percent of the undergraduate population was participating in summer internships. This was a concern since OVMA’s charge is to help student veterans find the right jobs following graduation and internships are a crucial component of their job search.

As a result of these findings, the OVMA Student Veteran Undergraduate Internship Award was created and opened to all full- and part-time undergraduate student veterans. The annual award provides financial assistance to undergraduate student veterans during the summer semester, when internships are most prevalent.