Undergraduate Opportunities

Undergraduate training programs, internships, and fellowships provide invaluable behind-the-scenes museum experience, offering access to museum resources and mentorship with staff and partners that are relevant for futures in the museum field and beyond.

Aic 2019 Summer Academy Objects Conservation Lab

Applications for the 2025 Summer Intensive are now open on our career portal.

The McMullan Family Foundation Summer Intensive

The McMullan Family Foundation Summer Intensive is a weeklong immersive program introducing undergraduate students to museum professions through workshops, behind-the-scenes tours, field trips, and networking events. This year’s program will run from June 9–14, 2025.

The 2025 program considers the theme of “Connections.” We will look at how art museums tell stories across space and time, knitting together the wide range of art across their collections and exhibitions. We will also address how collaboration and engagement within the museum and with museum audiences is essential to our work. Through this theme, we will ask: How do we explore and explain the relationships across a collection of art that spans the globe? How do we work together in those efforts? And how might ideas and feelings of contrast, discord, and even disconnection be generative in a museum?

Students have the opportunity to meet with and learn from multiple museum departments and staff as well as develop a robust peer cohort. Summer Intensive participants also receive writing resources, training on presentation skills, and ongoing career advice and mentorship.

Alumni of our Summer Intensive remain connected with the museum through free events and receive guidance from the museum’s Academic Engagement and Research staff on emerging professional opportunities at the Art Institute and beyond.

The McMullan Family Foundation’s primary objective is to support students who will encounter economic challenges if considering a career in the arts.

With the Summer Intensive, we want to foster a cohort of peers who learn with and from one another. In alignment with our objective to support students who will encounter economic challenges in a career in the arts, we aim to develop a cohort that represents a diversity of backgrounds, academic levels, ways of thinking, and experience level with museums. Applicants should meet the following qualifications:

Undergraduates who are currently enrolled at a university, college, or community college.
Students who have an interest in learning more about museums and how museums work, art and art history, and the wide range of career paths in the museum field. Previous coursework or job experience in these fields is not required.
Students who are based or attending school in the greater Chicagoland area and the Midwest are prioritized. Applicants must be eligible to work in the United States and able to physically access the museum for the duration of the program.
Students who are able to attend the McMullan Family Foundation Summer Intensive program for the entire week.
Most importantly, students who aim to support the goal of promoting inclusive museums that showcase a multiplicity of voices, perspectives, and identities, and who would benefit from the unique support and access that this opportunity provides.

The McMullan Family Foundation Summer Intensive application will open in early January and will be available through Friday, February 28, 2025, when it will close at 11:59 p.m. CDT. No late applications will be accepted.

In addition to submitting short answers to the Google Form linked in the job posting, your application must include the following:

1. One Letter of Recommendation

Applications must include one confidential letter of recommendation. A letter of recommendation can be submitted by faculty at your college or university or by current or past employers who are familiar with your skills and abilities. Recommenders are asked to explain how this program would help the applicant in their academic and career pursuits.

The letter of recommendation must be submitted via email to aerdept@artic.edu by Thursday, February 28, 2025 at 11:59 p.m. CDT. The recommendation must come directly from the recommender’s institutional e-mail, should be formatted as a PDF file, and the email subject line should be formatted, “[APPLICANT NAME]-2025 SUMMER INTENSIVE PROGRAM.”

We will only accept the recommendation letter submitted by the applicant’s designated recommender.

For more information about requesting a letter of recommendation, please review our Internship FAQs.

2. Application Document

When applying to this position on the museum’s HR Career Portal, please upload a single word document or pdf file that contains all three of the components listed below:

Short Essay Questions

Instead of a traditional cover letter or personal statement, please respond to the following questions in three short essays (no more than 250 words per answer). We encourage you to provide specific examples to support your answers or to illustrate your ideas:

What interests you about the McMullan Family Foundation Summer Intensive?
Based on an experience you had, what is one specific change you would like to see in art museums? Please be specific.
Provide an example of an experience where you were able to offer your unique perspective to a project, discussion, or dialogue, and explain the impact you had.

Résumé

In your resume, please include:

Contact information (phone number, email, current mailing address, and permanent address)
School and area of study/major
Expected graduation date
Relevant employment, volunteer, and/or extracurricular experiences
Computer and language skills
The exact name and email address of the person submitting your letter of recommendation.

Academic Transcripts

We are interested to learn about your coursework and overall academic trajectories. Please provide unofficial transcripts for your entire undergraduate career, including the college or university you currently attend and any you may have previously attended.

For more information about crafting a strong application, please review our Internship FAQs.

We anticipate accepting 15 students into the 2025 program. Applicants will be notified whether or not they have been accepted by Friday, April 4, 2025.

Participants will be given a stipend the week before the program begins to assist them for the duration of the Summer Intensive.

All participants must stay in SAIC student housing, which we provide as part of the program. Each participant will be given a single-person room. Student housing is walking distance to the museum and will enable participants to reach the museum in a timely manner each morning, while also allowing space to connect with their cohort and work on assignments together after hours.

Check-in for SAIC student housing will occur the Sunday before the program begins, and check-out will happen the Sunday after the program concludes.

The McMullan Family Foundation Summer Intensive and the McMullan Arts Leadership Initiative are supported by the James and Madeleine McMullan Family Foundation.

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Eligibility and Qualifications

Application Details

Selection Process

Stipend and Housing

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