COLSA’s SOAR Fund

Supporting Students’ Ability to Reach New Heights

About

COLSA’s SOAR Fund is designed to assist undergraduate students with experiential learning expenses by providing compensation for internships and expenses.  Compensation may be used to supplement unpaid internships or pay for transportation to interviews and career events. The SOAR Fund is a rolling fund and accepts applications year-round. While all COLSA students are invited to apply, applicants with financial need are strongly encouraged.

Criteria for Applying

Sydney Snelling, Biomedical Sciences major interning at Lonza

• General: Students must be in good academic standing with the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture and the University.
• Students who accept compensation agree to provide a reflection of their experience at its completion and agree to be interviewed and featured in COLSA's Spotlight Series.
• Students may only receive funding from the SOAR Fund one time during their academic career.
• Internship Funding: Students must have secured an internship related to their career goals and provide documentation (e.g., signed offer letter). Please note that all the data provided will be verified.
• Internships may be full or part-time but must be a minimum of 10 weeks in duration.
• Career Travel Funding: Students to provide documentation of the event for which career-travel compensation is being requested.

Application Process

Internship Stipend

• Students may apply for an internship stipend by submitting the following documents:
  • An updated resume
  • A one page essay delineating how this internship experience impacts their long-term career and professional goals, how the funds will be used in support of their experiential learning, and why this is important to them.
  • Proof of the internship through an offer letter on company letterhead detailing the number of hours per week, start and end date of the internship, and explicitly states that the internship is unpaid.
• The SOAR Fund is designed to assist undergraduate students in gaining industry experience. Regretfully, it cannot fund on-campus and university experiences; internships for which you are receiving credit and/or required for your major, and dietetic internships because they are post-graduation experiences.

Career Travel Stipend

• Students may apply by submitting the following:
  • A half-page document delineating why they are requesting the funding, where they seek to use it, and a statement of need.
  • Associated documentation providing evidence of the travel-related expense(s).
  • An updated resume
• The SOAR Fund cannot fund expenses related to graduate school interviews/travel. 

Applicants with financial need are strongly encouraged to apply. Please include an explanation on how these funds will allow you to pursue an experiential opportunity that otherwise would not be possible or would create an undue financial burden.

All applications will be reviewed, and applicants notified of the status of their application within three weeks of submission.