Internship and Living Stipends

SUNY Cortland’s Internship and Living Stipend provides support that enables students to participate in unpaid internships, fieldwork, or curricular applied learning in public service and high-demand nonprofit sectors (including education, community health, healthcare, and more) related to their future career goals while attending SUNY Cortland. Funding provided can support transportation, parking, child care, other support such as housing, food and other incidental costs and expenses.

• Must be a currently matriculated SUNY Cortland student, undergraduate or graduate student, in good academic standing (not on academic probation). Students are not eligible after their graduation.
• Must have completed a minimum of 12 credit hours at SUNY Cortland.
• Must have secured an unpaid/underpaid internship, fieldwork, or curricular applied learning experience for the future by the time of application. No retroactive stipends will be awarded.
  • You will be asked to provide your supervisor’s information in the application so that we may verify.
  • The experience must be supervised by someone at the organization’s site. The site supervisor cannot be a family member.
• This stipend is designed to support students who would need to work for pay to finance their education – preference will be given to students doing 12-16 credit full-time internships.
• Students are eligible for only one award per degree program.
  

• Students will fill out the internship and living stipend application via Formstack (winter session 2025 is currently live). Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis with deadlines as follows:
  • By January 16 for spring semester
  • By April 15 for summer session
  • By August 15 for fall semester
  • By November 15 for winter session
• The selection committee will review applications quarterly to select recipient(s). Award decisions will typically be communicated prior to the start of each term.
• The selection committee will include (but is not limited to):
  • Internship and Student Employment Coordinator, Career Services
  • Associate Director, Career Services
  • Rep from School of Education
  • Rep from Health Department
  • Rep from Sport Management Department
• At least three (3) members of the committee shall constitute a quorum for any meeting at which a vote is to be taken, at least one of which must be from Career Services.
• The selection committee will check and confirm eligibility, read applications, and decide on the recipients for each cycle.

• All applicants will be notified via email to their cortland.edu email address.
• For students to receive payment, they will need to:
  • sign and submit a copy of their award letter indicating that: they accept or decline the awarded stipend, they understand that they must complete their academic curricular requirements successfully in order to receive full funding, (e.g., number of hours, any academic assignments, etc.), and if their plans change, they must notify Career Services/the selection committee immediately via email at career.services@cortland.edu (ATTN: Taylor Lynch)
  • sign a standard voucher prepared by Career Services [ See *NOTE below]
  • the address on the Standard Voucher must match income tax document information; unfortunately, these forms cannot be e-signed.
• *NOTE: If a student is outside of the Cortland, NY area and not able to come to Career Services to sign their standard voucher, they can print, sign, and scan the document and send it with other scanned forms to career.services@cortland.edu (ATTN: Taylor Lynch).

The selection committee can award a maximum of up to $4800 per student. For summer and winter experiences, the maximum is increased to up to $5400 per student. The maximum number of awards will be determined by budget.

• Stipends will be awarded in one payment as early in the semester as possible. A check will be mailed to the recipient at the home address used on the required documents. Checks are processed by the Office of Expenditures in Albany. 
• Any international students who are selected must have an I-20 document authorized by the International Programs Office in advance of starting the experience.
• This is an internship/ living stipend and is considered taxable income. It is the student's responsibility to determine if taxes are owed on grant monies received in connection with course of study. Students should therefore consult a tax advisor regarding these grants.
• The University is not required to file (and will not file) a Form W-2 or Form 1099 for such grants.

• Start early! Searching, applying, and securing an internship can take time. Additionally, once you have identified an internship, the campus review and approval process may require executing an affiliation agreement, which can take up to six weeks. Make sure you are preparing at least a semester in advance as some companies have specific deadlines that will occur earlier than SUNY Cortland’s processing deadlines.
• Visit the Career Services internships page online to learn more about the internship process, eligibility, and support with your internship search.

Connect with your department and advisor to see if your academic program requires or encourages an applied learning component like fieldwork, student teaching placement, etc.