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Undergraduate Internship Program

Saint Louis University’s History Internship Program allows students to earn course credit while gaining valuable professional experience as an intern at public and private institutions engaged in history-related projects.

This course can fulfill one of the 3000-level courses required for a history major.

Internship Requirements

Interns devote the equivalent of eight to 10 hours per week for a 14-week semester, or 112 to 140 hours, in an internship position jointly agreed upon by the student and the internship director.

Interns may also be required to complete a bi-weekly check-in with the internship director and a brief weekly journal. Interns email their journal entries to the internship director every week, or every other week, and then collect them into one document at the end of the semester.

Students need the permission of the internship coordinator in order to register. Applications for the program are available from the Department of History.

To begin the process, set up a meeting with the internship director, Flannery G. Burke, Ph.D.,  flannery.burke@slu.edu then submit an internship application to the history department office the semester before you hope to do the internship.

Identifying an Internship Site

As every history student knows, research is key. Below is a list of local historical sites and organizations, you might consider for an internship. To find the most recent information about internships and deadlines, check each organization’s website.

You are also encouraged to look for internships through Saint Louis University Career Services and consider taking an internship in a related department, such as international studies, American studies, political science, women's and gender studies, and African American studies. The directory of the Missouri Association for Museums and Archives may also be useful for your search.

We encourage you to explore other options and sites both in and outside of St. Louis. If you know of a local organization or historical site that fits your interest, research the internship opportunities available.

If you are interested in honing your research skills, you may also consider working individually with a history faculty member as a research assistant, helping professors with their book projects. Research projects have included working on archaeological evidence, historic site ownership, children's games and 19th-century newspaper editorials.

Local Internship Opportunities

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

Transcribe an oral history; write a lesson plan; develop marketing strategies; work hands-on in our manuscript, audio/visual and Lincoln collection areas; teach a child the art of the "hoop and stick.” The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is committed to providing learning opportunities and career-enhancing experiences to college and graduate students. Whether greeting the public on the front lines or working behind the scenes in administrative departments, interns take an active role in executing the mission of the presidential museum and library.

Working with professional staff as part of a skilled team, interns participate in significant projects, as well as day-to-day operations as they become familiar with the museum and library fields. References and contacts gained through work as an intern can be helpful in securing future employment and admission to further programs of study. Students and recent graduates in history, museum studies, library science or education are highly encouraged to apply.

Campbell House Museum

Since opening on Feb. 6, 1943, the Campbell House Museum has served the greater St. Louis area as one of the region's premier historic property museums. The museum not only preserves the Campbell's house but also their collection of original furniture, fixtures, paintings, objects and thousands of pages of family documents.

The Campbell House Museum works in cooperation with colleges and universities to promote education in history, art history, museum studies and other programs. Campbell House interns have gone on the find jobs in museums around the country. Interns may be assigned to focus on a particular facet of the museum, such as collections, development, research, educational programming or promotion.

In recent years interns have worked on projects as diverse as helping establish the Museum's PastPerfect collection database, a GIS-project mapping the Campbell's Lucas Place neighborhood and research into Robert Campbell's involvement in the 1851 Fort Laramie treaty.

Chatillon-De Menil Mansion

The Chatillon-De Menil Mansion was built in two sections by families with very different lifestyles. Henri Chatillon built the first section, a four-room brick farmhouse, in 1848. He was a guide and hunter for the American Fur Company of St. Louis in the 1840′s before settling permanently in the area with his second wife Odile Delor Lux. Chatillon served as a guide for Francis Parkman Jr. in 1846. Parkman wrote about their trip in his book The Oregon Trail. Chatillon sold the "farmhouse" in 1856 to Dr. Nicolas N. DeMenil.

DeMenil was a wealthy Frenchman. He came to St. Louis in 1834 and married Emilie Sophie Chouteau, who was a descendant of St. Louis' founding family. The DeMenils originally used the home as a summer retreat. In 1861, the DeMenils hired English architect Henry Pitcher to turn the farmhouse into a Greek Revival Mansion. At that time they moved into the home permanently. The addition was completed in 1863. 

Discovery Expedition of St. Charles

The Discovery Expedition is a nonprofit organization dedicated to rediscovering the legacy of Lewis and Clark. The organization promotes education, and the study of American history and heritage through discussions and living history demonstrations.

The Lewis and Clark Boathouse and Nature Center is the Discovery Expedition's permanent home. Situated beside the Missouri River at Bishop's Landing in charming historic St. Charles, Missouri, the educational facility features exhibits relating to the Lewis and Clark expedition as well as the Missouri River ecosystem.

Eugene Field House and Toy Museum

Today the Eugene Field House is a museum and memorial — an early Victorian jewel reflecting the era in which Roswell, Frances and Eugene Field lived within its walls. Featured exhibits include artifacts from Eugene's personal collections at Sabine Farm, his Chicago home.

The Eugene Field House and St. Louis Toy Museum offers an internship each summer to one qualified student. This environment will allow insight and experience in giving tours, exhibit planning and development, program development and presentation, collections management, strategic planning, developing partnerships staff and volunteer management.

Holocaust Museum

The Holocaust Museum and Learning Center, a department of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis, opened in May 1995 and was realized through the vision and generosity of many community leaders and Holocaust survivors.

The Holocaust Museum and Learning Center houses a 5,000-square-foot core exhibition that provides a chronological history of the Holocaust with personal accounts of Holocaust survivors who emigrated to St. Louis. Photographs, artifacts, text panels and audio-visual displays guide visitors through pre-war Jewish life in Europe, the rise of Nazism and events during the Holocaust between 1933-1945, and post-war events, including the Nuremberg Trials and Jewish life after the Holocaust.

Jefferson Barracks

Jefferson Barracks, one of the National Cemetery Administration’s oldest interment sites, has served as a burial place soldiers from all wars. The original military post was built south of St. Louis on the banks of the Mississippi River to replace Fort Bellefontaine.

Selected for its strategic geographic location, the post was opened in 1826. Jefferson Barracks became the army's first permanent base west of the Mississippi River. By the 1840s, it was the largest military establishment in the United States. Many people believe that Jefferson Barracks is without question, one of the most sacred and historically significant sites in all of Missouri regarding the American Civil War.

Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Archives

The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Archives is charged to preserve records and manuscripts that document the administrative history of the park and its associated themes.

As the corporate memory of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, the archives also makes its resources available to the public in accordance with objectives outlined in the park's statement for management: to enhance and enlarge public understanding and appreciation of the significance of 19th-century American westward expansion and of the related individual significance of the Old Courthouse, the Arch and of the early development of St. Louis.

Landmarks Association of St. Louis

Organized in 1958 and incorporated as a nonprofit in 1959, the Landmarks Association of St. Louis is the primary advocate for the region's built environment. Its important early victories include the Bissell Mansion and Red Water Tower in Hyde Park, the Chatillon-DeMenil House in Benton Park, along with the Wainwright Building and Old Post Office in downtown.

Today, the association draws its strength from a broad-based membership of more than 1,300 regional dues-paying citizens include architects, attorneys, developers, consultants, historians, neighborhood leaders, bankers and community volunteers who contribute expertise and participate as advocates.

Lincoln Home National Historic Site

Abraham Lincoln's home in downtown Springfield, Illinois has proved irresistible to visitors since it first opened to the public in 1887. Constructed in 1839 and beautifully restored to its 1860 appearance, the 12-room, Greek Revival house was Abraham and Mary Lincoln's home for 17 years. Today, the Lincoln home draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

Midwest Jesuit Archives

The Midwest Jesuit Archives serve as the collective memory of the Chicago, Missouri and Wisconsin Provinces and the Jesuit Conference. The Midwest Jesuit Archives collects, identifies, appraises, describes, organizes and preserves the historical records of the Midwestern provinces and the Jesuit Conference.

The records are made accessible to researchers in order to provide a window into the origins, development, spirit and charisma of the Society of Jesus in the United States. The archives are located in St. Louis's Central West End at the northwest corner of West Pine Boulevard and Taylor Avenue.

Missouri History Museum and Learning Center

The Missouri History Museum has an active internship program available in the fall, spring and summer semesters. For the most part, the selected interns are college juniors or above, although occasionally exceptional underclass students are accepted.

MHM has a variety of departments that offer internships, including: archives, exhibits, community education and events, human resources, library, media collections, museum collections, research, special projects, publications and visitor services. An intern position is also offered in collaboration with the Association of Midwest Museums. The staff is deeply experienced in supervising interns in the professional standards of their fields.

National Archives Records Center

The National Personnel Records Center is one of the National Archives and Records Administration's largest operations. It the central repository of personnel-related records for both the military and civil services of the United States Government. Examples of individual records include General George Patton, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix and Charles Lindbergh.

Students interested in this project would perform holdings maintenance, minor preservation duties, and sorting, arrangement and numbering of individual pages. Additionally, students will be required to scan and manipulate images utilizing Photoshop, as well as perform data entry into an indexing database.

Saint Louis University Art Museum

The Saint Louis University Museum of Art enriches the aesthetic component of a SLU education through the display of diverse cultural worlds and the sponsorship of educational programs related to the arts.

The museum is a regional venue for scholarly presentation of works of historical art and artifacts and also is a venue for exhibitions of work by students, faculty, staff, alumni, benefactors and friends of the University. It brings together the University's permanent art collections with traveling exhibitions in an inviting setting which is available and accessible to the community, the region and the world.

Saint Louis University Law Library

Saint Louis University’s law library is recognized nationally by National Jurist as the 32nd Best Law Library in the country and provides important resources to the School of Law community.

With more than 600,000 volume equivalents and 25,000 electronic journals, the library provides broad, in-depth support to the school's centers, certificate concentrations and dual-degree programs. 

Scott Joplin House

In 1976, Scott Joplin's St. Louis home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and, in 1984, the owner, Jeff-Vander-Lou, Inc., donated the property to the Department of Natural Resources' Division of State Parks. The house now has the distinction of being the only state historic site dedicated wholly to the presentation of African-American contributions to Missouri's cultural history.

The visitor center exhibits depict St. Louis and the neighborhood as Joplin knew them, and additional details about his life and work. The operating player piano in the music room allows visitors to listen to piano rolls of the ragtime era, including some that were cut by Joplin himself. Gas lights, calcimine paint and second-hand furnishings re-create the modest beginnings of Joplin's St. Louis years. 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has approximately 37,000 dedicated civilians and soldiers delivering engineering services to customers in more than 90 countries worldwide.

These men and women protect and restore the nation's environment, including critical efforts in the Everglades, the Louisiana coast and along the country’s major waterways. The Corps is also cleaning sites contaminated with hazardous, toxic or radioactive waste and material in an effort to sustain the environment.

Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site

Ulysses S. Grant is known as the victorious Civil War general who saved the Union and the 18th president of the United States. Few people know about his rise to fame or his personal life. He first met Julia Dent, his future wife, at her family home, named White Haven.

Today, that home commemorates their lives and loving partnership against the turbulent backdrop of the 19th century.