Intern Responsibilities

Each intern serves as both a resident adviser and a program assistant. In addition to your RA duties, you will usually have one or two program assistant tasks each day. The rest of the time you will be on call and should plan accordingly to use your personal cell phone. Students and High School Program staff members should be able to contact you at all times, and you should be able to respond to calls immediately. Though we cannot reimburse you for cell phone expenses, they have been figured into the stipend. You will be provided with several HSP t-shirts that you should wear on campus during the day and when leading trips. You should be around the campus much of the time, though you can also spend a fair amount of time exploring New York.

As a Resident Adviser

  1. Serve as live-in resident adviser to a group of about ten students. Watch for their safety, comfort, and strict adherence to the HSP Behavioral Standards Agreement. Ensure, to the best of your ability, that everyone feels comfortable with you and with one another, feels included in the community, and is enjoying the program. Organize social events such as study breaks and trips to New York City attractions.

  2. Serve as resident adviser to the entire Residential Program—about 600 students per session. Keep an eye on general safety, comfort, inclusiveness, and adherence to behavioral standards. This is also your chance to organize lots of activities on campus and all over New York, in the evening and on weekends.

    • On-campus activities include organized sports, a “yearbook,” and an end of program dance. We have also had bands, talent shows, college admission workshops, a newsletter, etc; and we welcome your ideas.

    • You can run trips to anything worth doing in and around New York: theater, films, Central Park, concerts, sight seeing, interesting neighborhoods and restaurants, museums, galleries, tours, zoos, the beach, hiking, etc. We fund all your expenses, but the students have to pay for themselves. You can run as many trips as you want, as long as there is student interest and you can get other RAs to cover for your responsibilities to your suite.

    We usually offer three or four activities every evening and weekend day. It is up to you to promote your activities through advertising, word of mouth, etc. If offered an interview, you should have some idea of what activities you would like to organize.

As a Program Assistant

You will most likely have between two and four of the following five duties. You should consider which ones most appeal to you and, if offered an interview, be prepared to name the ones for which you would like to volunteer.

  1. Organize activities open to the entire High School Program during the 2½ hour period between the morning and afternoon classes. We normally offer organized sports; a student lounge with board games, arts & crafts activities, and video games; and a few short trips to local restaurants and places of interest. Feel free to suggest other ideas for activities.

  2. Staff the High School Program Office: general office work, mostly answering phone calls from parents, helping students and instructors who come in with various inquiries, and helping coordinate the day-to-day functioning of the program.

  3. Instructional support:
    • Photocopying
    • Providing audio-visual materials
    • Collecting attendance sheets
    • Contacting parents or RAs of absent students
    • Accompanying class trips

  4. TAing for one of the HSP classes. TAing can involve anything from tutoring, running a discussion section, or marking papers to technical and administrative support, depending on the needs of particular instructors. If you are interested in TAing you should be ready during the interview to state which classes you would be interested in working with. You can find descriptions of the classes on the HSP Web site. Only about twenty of these classes will actually require TAs. You should volunteer for this option only if you are genuinely interested in a particular class. You do not have to commit to a TA position until you know what the instructor would expect from you. There are a limited number of TA positions, so you should not expect that you will necessarily get one.

  5. Community Outreach: Each summer we have a number of community outreach projects organized by interns and implemented by HSP students. These include park clean-ups, helping out at soup kitchens, visiting the elderly, and food and clothing drives.