Students sometimes search the site trying to find listings of available internships. We do sometimes have sponsors contact us and we post specific listings on the English Majors Listserv (If you are a declared major you should be receiving those posts. If you are not, contact the Undergraduate Secretary in the English Department to get signed up.) but more typically we work from a combination of the student's stated interests and a pool of known sites. It has happened that the Program Director has sought out new placements when there has not been a good fit among the known sites.
Often students are hoping to find a listing of offerings mostly because they cannot themselves imagine what they might be interested to do with their degree. They are hoping that reading through a list of internship opportunities, something might jump out and speak to them. For those purposes, here's a listing of current or recent placements:
Placements like education, law, advertising and journalism (both print and broadcast) seem to evoke enough of a sense of what you would be doing there as not to require further explanation. Public relations, communications, and marketing are broader terms that students more often have trouble visualizing. The fields are inter-related and various. In these kinds of jobs, the task is generally that of providing information and molding an image, whether it is the image of a sports team (we have have students placed with both the Binghamton Senators Hockey Team and the Binghamton Mets Baseball Team, as well as the BU Athletic Department) of a hospital, a university, utilities company, nonprofit, shopping mall, etc. Each of these is a pr/marketing/communications type of position but the feel will be different according to the organization. Do you see yourself as being happiest in a commercial, nonprofit, or academic setting? For most of these placements strong writing skills are essential; for many computer skills (both web design and /or social media sites) or talent with graphics is a real plus. Versatility is also a good trait for many of these jobs; sometimes the same person writes press releases, updates the web, plans events, and interfaces with the public. English majors are English majors because they enjoy reading so publishing is another field that students find attractive. Journalism and publishing are two fields that new media is revolutionizing. Those fields are in transition and at the moment, publishing opportunities in Binghamton are quite limited. We do however have a number of good placements with the literary journal Harpur Palate for those with an interest in literary publishing.
