As part of the UNC Master’s of Educational Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship program, students are placed at internships. I took a bit of a less conventional route and found an internship that works for me at the Population Council’s Girl Innovation, Research, and Learning Center, where I have been serving as a research assistant since July 2021. I worked the first month-and-a-half full-time (40hrs/week) and eased into part-time (20 hrs/week) after MEITE began. Though this can be a balancing act as a full-time student, I’m enjoying getting a fully immersive experience!
Since the beginning of my internship, I have had the immense opportunity to work a number of projects including:
- Adolescent Atlas for Action (A3), a data visualization tool geared for policymakers and other stakeholders who seek a comprehensive understanding of the policy context: which policies are present, where might gaps be filled, and where might there be misalignment between policy and implementation? The tool visually displays a checklist for a list of 113 countries 56 policies. The policies cut across 9 domains including education, gender, sexual and reproductive health, nutrition and more.
- Assisting with a grant proposal, as well as a scoping review analyzing the limitations of existing literature on sexual and gender minority (SGM) adolescents
- Creating a tool to map indicators related to migration, digital access, contraceptive use, and empowerment from about 20 questionnaires/datasets
- Authoring a blog/insights piece on menstrual cup uptake and climate adaptation
- Writing two methods briefs on the A3 process and the Adolescent Data Hub methodology
- Current work: Developing slide decks and webinar materials for onboarding interns to understand the background on: 1) systematic review observing education and health outcomes and 2) using the Covidence platform for filtering abstracts and texts
