Ron Koehn Grant Award for Innovative Education Abroad Programs

April 24, 2014

Forum on Education Abroad

233 W. Louther Street

Carlisle, PA 17013

(717) 245-1031

Dear Sir/Madame:

Thank you for considering this proposal to help support City Internships grow and reach University of California students. We strongly believe in the association of learning and travel. Therefore, our programs link the two and prepare students for the working field. Our proven results have shown that we prepare students better and faster than they would without the program. By targeting the University of California campuses in particular we will draw more students to our program and in return better prepare them for their future.

City Internships would greatly be thankful for a contribution of $50,000 to begin this program. In our six year history, we believe this program will immensely benefit CI and help it reach many more students than ever before. As we have likeminded missions to provide educational-travel opportunities, we hope you can assist our outcome.

If there are any questions please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to hearing back from you and working with you in the future

Sincerely,

Statement

Please discuss how education abroad programs that you have developed have contributed to innovations in education abroad program design.

City Internships (CI) began in 2011 as a small company that offered exclusive financial service-based internships in London’s historic financial district. Over the years we strengthened our curriculums, expanded our programs and grew internationally. Since inception we have grown from one city to now 12 in 5 countries. Our sector is no longer secluded to only finance but now eight markets are offered to graduates.

CI is dedicated to being an accelerated learning provider offering full-time immersive in-person courses that combine intensive classroom-based workshops and seminars, practical work experience-based training and a link to potential employers. The experience of our graduate participants is to be able to learn, travel and receive work experience. CI bridges the gap between a college education and the skills employers need. Unlike other internship or study abroad programs, CI combines the two concepts. For recent graduates who missed the opportunity to travel during school, CI makes it possible to experience those new cultures and simultaneously gain valuable professional work experience.

To date we have helped over 1,000 students find lucrative careers via our programs. We have established partnerships with host companies committed to developing the next generation of graduates. Our practice-over-theory coaching style has resulted in 65% of our students getting hired straight out of the program by their host companies. CI makes it accessible to discover your career path and travel to a new city. The eight-week, full-time internships are supplemented with a Career Navigator Series and Future Leaders Series, designed to help you make informed career decisions, likened to a mini-MBA. Together, these courses comprise a total around 30 hours of contact time and, also offered are travel opportunities and social events for the participants. This unique program combines all the essentials necessary to take on the world after graduating college.

Funding Request

1. What need or problem does your project work to address?

Many college graduates are thrust into the working world with little knowledge of the skills desired by employers. Although an academic education is extremely valuable, it does not equate to all the preparatory skills required to getting hired. CI’s solution is to attempt to aid students who need an extra boost in landing a career. The program’s target is to teach those skills that employers are looking for; professional communication skills, experience working in a team, and applicable work experience.

CI works to makes sure students are not struggling to find work after graduating, and also introduce new types of jobs to students uncertain of what they want to do. By collaborating with corporations we make it easy for students to find employment after graduating. Our alumni have a high success rate at getting hired; three times more quickly than the national average of U.K. and U.S. graduates. They also earn 30 percent more ($45,000 versus $36,000) straight out of college (Academic Handbook, p. 5). Our program creates the most prepared and ready students after completion to go on and live successful lives.

In addition to being prepared for the corporate world, CI gives its participants the opportunity to travel the authentic world. CI’s extent to five countries gives students the chance to live in a new part of the world. We strongly believe in the importance of gaining the broad prospective of cultures through travel. For students who missed the opportunity to travel in college or were hindered due to other reasons, can get the chance during our program. The journey can be eye-opening for many of our participants who may often settle in their new host countries.

2. In a short paragraph, tell us your project’s (or organization’s) goals and the specific outcomes you project for the grant period (i.e. numbers served, behavior or attitudes changed, capital project completed, etc.).

Our goal with this project is to attract more UC students to CI. By targeting the UC system specifically we believe that this will increase our participant attendance considerably. This will be achieved by utilizing the $50,000 in two ways: sponsoring 20 students with $2,000 scholarships and marketing expenses. For those that apply, we will offer 20 scholarships for UC students in particular who are seeking a relieved financial burden. The $2,000 will help in covering travel, living accommodations and personal expenses in the 8-week CI program. The additional $10,000 from the grant will go towards adverting to the UC campuses.

By introducing the program to UC students, we intend that CI’s reputation will increase. As a result more students in the future will enroll in CI’s programs. By collecting data on the UC students who have participated in our program and their successes, we can use this as an advertisement tool to prospective UC students in the future. In addition, if this project to recruit UC students is a success we can move on to other universities to target their graduates. The 20 scholarships will ensure that we will have participation from students and it will be used as an additional marketing tool. By appealing to universities we can increase our pool of quality candidates to be a part of our program.

1. Describe your project or the capital items requested, including:

Whether the project is new, ongoing or an expansion:

This is a new program.

Target audience, including specific demographic information:

The target audience are UC students of all backgrounds. We chose the UCs because they are leaders in the public university system and have a large student population. Anyone is welcome to the program as we do not discriminate. We are looking for any student that has graduated with a minimum of a bachelor’s degree. The goal is to attract tenacious working students interested in getting internship experience working with corporations. Our program that is offering sponsorships will be intended for students who apply for them. There will be an application process in which students seeking sponsorships must apply through an essay competition. The winners will then be awarded the $2,000 scholarships to attend the program.

Activities/strategies that will be used to meet your stated outcomes

Our planned outcome is to receive a future increase in UC student participants to CI. This will be done by various marketing tactics. We plan to appear in university magazines and newspapers as an after graduation resource. We hope to work with the UC’s Education Abroad Program (EAP) to receive mailing lists and pass our flyers to their program’s members interested in future travel experiences. CI will also hosts workshops at each UC campus to explain and introduce our program to the prospective students. The workshop will include speeches from program directors, and alumni, as well include pamphlets and a video detailing the program. After one year, data will be collected and analyzed to market to UC students in the future.

General timeline for the main objectives of your project:

We will acquire all of our resources after the grant is accepted in the later months of 2017. We will finalize all pamphlets, advertisements, and commercials during this time. Once our program is finalized we will schedule dates with each of the UCs to begin the program. We hope to work with each of the UCs at the same time starting at the beginning of 2018. That way we can have students ready to participate in CI after graduating in the summer. We will begin by sending out flyers and newsletters in the early months of 2018, then follow up with a workshop in the spring for students who have heard about the program. Applications for sponsorships will be dispersed in early spring, and results will be rewarded in late spring.

1. If this is a request for General Support, what are your organization’s most pressing needs?

The majority of the grant will go to sponsorships of 20 UC students. However, we will be using $10,000 in general support to launch the program. Our current staff ranges from 11-50 employees so we will need to hire more employees to successful carry out this project. This will go towards our marketing staff to design specific advertisements to the UCs. Expenses will also include magazine and newspaper print costs. Workshop expenses will need to be covered to operate and provide travel and lodge to our employees to attend each of the UC campuses. Once the project is completed we will need data analyst to interpret the information.

1. How do you plan to evaluate the effectiveness or impact of the project?

The effectiveness of the project will be determined through our data analysis. If students go on to find jobs after our program we will attribute that as a success. If students get hired as a direct result of one of our internships then we will also count this as an effective result. We will also look at our participation numbers to see if they have increased since our last couple of years. With that number we will see how much of which are new UC students. These results will be measured on a continuous basis to see if we successfully gained a steady influx of UC students. We will also compare the results of the UC students to the average UC graduates to see if our program helps them find jobs at a faster rate.

1. Summarize the skills and relevant experience of key staff/volunteers essential to the project’s success. If other organizations are collaborating on this project, note which ones and in what ways.

We need a marketing team that is capable of compiling the appropriate advertisements mentioned. We will need data analysts to summarize our data. Our volunteers will include CI’s alumni willing to speak at our workshops. Our staff will be in charge of managing our applications and sending out program information. There will be no other collaborating organizations on this project.

1. If full funding is not available, what is the contingency plan for securing additional support and/or how can you modify your proposal?

If additional funds are required that are outside the range of our resources, we intend to search for likeminded funders to sustain us. The current grant proposal should provide enough funds for the upcoming months however, giving us enough time to research and acquire additional grants to keep us moving forward, if necessary. Therefore, when need arises, we will take the appropriate measures to relieve it. If necessary we can easily modify the amount of scholarships we offer to students which can lower expenses. Additionally some advertisements can be mitigated as well to lower costs.

References

"Academic Handbook." (n.d.): n. pag. City-Internships. Web.