The Sustainability Internships and Community Resources (SICR) Department is excited to be a resource for both on and off campus organizations and agencies.
The Sustainability Internships and Community Resources Department may be able to support your organization in a variety of ways described below:
Grant Writing
SICR frequently partners on joint grant applications and we would love to hear your project ideas! This guide highlights the ways we can assist in your grant writing efforts.
Intern Support
Interested in creating a new internship opportunity or pitching a project idea? We would love to connect with you! Our intern hosting guide highlights options for engaging student interns
Student Feedback
Have a project related to sustainability which you would like to get feedback from students on? This guide will highlight how SICR can help.
Tours & Presentations
Interested in having a sustainability student intern or professional come and speak to your class or group? Check out our offerings here.
Grant writing
The Sustainability Internships and Community Resources (SICR) Department works hard to ensure that our funding streams are diversified, helping us be resilient during lean times and to not be overly dependent on any one funder. Our funding includes grants, private donations, campus core funds, and legislative funding. In terms of grants, SICR has experience with state, federal, and foundation based-grants. The Director of Student Sustainability Initiatives and SICR, Katie Maynard is an experienced Principal Investigator and trained through UCSB’s Sponsored Projects Training for Administrators in Research (STAR) program. SICR is approved by the Office of Research to administer grants.
Interest in Partnering on a Grant
This option is open to both on and off campus partners. If you have a project that you think may align with SICR and which you would like us to play an active role in the implementation of, please let us know! Many funding agencies prioritize projects where there is active involvement from multiple organizations and agencies. We are particularly excited to partner on grants that include funding for paid internships for UCSB students, projects that address sustainability issues (on or off campus), and/or projects that support the basic needs (food and housing security) of UCSB students. Please contact SICR Director, Katie Maynard kcmaynard@ucsb.edu to share your ideas and/or interest in partnering.
Request for Support Letters
If you are seeking a support letter for a funding agency/grant off-campus and SICR is not part of the implementation team for the grant, please contact Jewel Persad <jewel.persad@ucsb.edu>, Campus Sustainability Manager, who can help coordinate with the appropriate departments to determine if UCSB can offer a support letter. If SICR is a part of the implementation team for the grant or the grant is an internal grant (such as TGIF, Coastal Fund, SFAC, etc) you can contact SICR Director, Katie Maynard directly kcmaynard@ucsb.edu.
Support for Student Affairs Departments
If you represent a department/program within the Division of UCSB’s Student Affairs, SICR is able to assist you with applying for and administering grants (even those not related to Sustainability) depending on staff workloads at the time of the request. Katie Higgins, Grant Writer for Student Affairs Grants and Development can assist with grant applications. SICR can steward your grant through the appropriate campus protocols and portals, including coordination with the Office of Research. If needed, the SICR Director can be a Principal Investigator or Co-PI for the grant. SICR can also work with the extramural funds office to steward and manage the grant funds post-acceptance. Please note that though the Grant Writer and SICR Director can support your department with grant applications and management, active engagement of subject matter experts and practitioners is essential to ensure success.
Please contact Katie Higgins kmhiggins@ucsb.edu and Katie Maynard kcmaynard@ucsb.edu to start the process.
Intern Support
UCSB is home to some of the brightest and most hard working students!
The average incoming UCSB student has a GPA exceeding 4.0. With over 200 majors, degrees, and credentials, our student body brings a wide diversity of knowledge to any project.
If you are primarily seeking to promote an internship, we strongly recommend you visit the UCSB Career Services website: https://career.ucsb.edu/recruiters/post-a-position where you can learn about the best way to post an announcement and get visibility across the student body. This is where we post all the positions for our department and we have had great results in terms of the number and quality of applications.
If you are interested in proposing a project that your organization and ours can collaborate on together, please reach out to SICR Director, Katie Maynard kcmaynard@ucsb.edu. Depending on the scope of the project and current commitments, we may be able to align the project with existing funding streams available in our department or we may need to explore joint fundraising to raise the money to support a new internship.
Student Feedback
Sustainability Internships and Community Resources (SICR) Department is committed to uplifting student voices.
If you have a project where you are interested in receiving thoughtful feedback from the student body and have a process in place to integrate that feedback into your project, SICR would be excited to be a partner in helping you envision/create a feedback process or even help you collect that feedback (depending on staff workload at the time of the request).
Please contact SICR Director, Katie Maynard kcmaynard@ucsb.edu to explore this.
Tours & Presentations
Interested in a presentation on a topic related to sustainability or a tour of a campus sustainability site?
This is a service we often offer! If the request is for subject matter that one of our staff has, we are happy to directly offer this programming. If you are seeking expertise outside of our knowledge, we are happy to connect you to other staff on the campus.
Some examples of presentations we offer include:
General Introduction to Campus Sustainability: Curious what the campus is doing around Sustainability and interested in an overview of existing efforts? This presentation will touch on a wide variety of sustainability work happening on campus as well as how to get involved.
History of Student Leadership in Campus Sustainability: SICR Director, Katie Maynard was a student activist from 2002-2005 and has been staff at UCSB ever since working closely with student leaders, both interns and student organizers. Learn about how students have shaped campus sustainability efforts throughout the campus’ history.
Campus and Community Garden Tours: We work with 8 community gardens on and off-campus of varying sizes and types. We can host garden tours of up to 100 people at a time.
Talks on any Active Projects: Please see our active projects page to see the topics that our Student Interns are working on right now! Our students are happy to share their work and in progress research.