The CALS Global Fellows Program supports CALS undergraduate students from any major in pursuit of challenging, professionally-focused summer internships and research placements that enhance and complement their career goals and academic progress while enriching their undergraduate experience with diverse cultural and international immersion. Through key partnerships, the Global Fellows Program provides a platform for students to make positive and definable contributions to global organizations and communities.

Acceptance to the program is competitive and a limited number of students are selected each year. Selected Fellows receive a stipend to offset major expenses.

The program includes three required parts: a pre-engagement in-person workshop (Spring 2024), a continuous 7–8-week internship or research placement in an international setting, and a 1-credit post-engagement course in the first 7-weeks of the Fall 2024 semester (ALS/GDEV 3105).

Suggested majors and/or professional interests:  Global Development, Agricultural Science, Global Health, Development Sociology focusing on economics, agriculture, international relations, development studies, health, nutrition, human ecology, gender studies

Information Session:

There are no information sessions planned at this time.   

Placement Opportunities

Placements: 2 total spots available (in-person in India) 

Tata-Cornell Institute (TCI) is a long-term research initiative focusing on the design and evaluation of innovative interventions linking agriculture, food systems, human nutrition, and poverty in India. TCI is part of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Interns based in the field with our partners or in the Delhi office will have predetermined deliverables and resources and support to carry them out. Interns may also be placed with one of our partner collaborators or as an assistant to a graduate student conducting fieldwork. Every effort will be made to ensure that the selected student is assigned according to his/her preferred area of interests and skillset; however, the TCI or partner collaborator may need to assign the student to a project that best meets the partner collaborator’s needs.

The goals of the internships:

• To provide students with a fieldwork based learning experience on topics relating to agriculture, food and nutrition
• Enhance the participants understanding of food policy and challenges within food systems in the context of India
• Exposure to data collection, management and analytical skills

Preferred qualifications: Knowledge of both quantitative and qualitative techniques will be useful during the internship. However TCI is willing to work with a range of skillsets students would bring from their respective disciplines. It will be helpful however, if students specify how their skill sets would contribute or be useful in the areas of TCI’s focus.

Video of 2018 Global Fellows discussing their experience. 

Selection: TCI and the CALS Global Fellows Program selection committee both interview final candidates. Exact specifics of each placement will be finalized through the Spring semester.

We encourage you to apply to your first choice program only. There is a space within the application to indicate if you have a second choice. If you are interested in two opportunities that are very different from one another and would prefer to write two statements of purpose, you may upload both to the same application in ONE document. Make sure they are clearly titled with the correct placement opportunity IF you are writing two statements. For reference, you can review examples of statements from past participants.   

You may preview the application without starting an application by clicking on the “preview application” button next to the apply button. All applications contain the same questions and all information related to the program can be found within the experience page. There is no additional information within the application.