Sustainable Transportation Pilot Program Intern, UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative

Position Description 

Please note that we are looking for a candidate that will be living in Santa Barbara this Summer and available to work with this internship through the Summer and next academic year.  Start date can be during Spring 2024 or as late as June 2024.

The UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative Pilot Program Intern and Fellow is responsible for collecting ideas, developing new ideas, and identifying projects that could assess and reduce emissions from commuting and/or UCSB's business-related air travel. Once the student identifies projects, they complete a feasibility study, develop an implementation plan, and launch the pilot of a new program on campus. New projects are identified each year.

There are a few projects that this fellow is likely to work on. We are working on implementation of a REACH 2.0 grant (https://www.energy.ca.gov/solicitations/2023-04/gfo-22-614-reliable-equitable-and-accessible-charging-multi-family-housing-20) which we applied for as a multi-jurisdictional coalition including San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. This grant will help us to install electric vehicle charging stations at Multi-family housing locations in mostly low income and disadvantaged communities. 50 of the charging ports will serve low income multi-family housing in Isla Vista. There will be 367 charging ports total included in the grant.  This fellow will assist with coordination between the agencies and implementation of this grant. The fellow will also assist with grant writing for other Electric Vehicle charging grants. 

We are also interested in models for commuter incentive programs such as Hytch (https://hytch.me/) or Pave (https://pavecommute.app/) though our campus budget is limited for such services, so we are interested in exploring innovative financial models to support these programs. 

Lastly, in the next few years we are interested in developing a transportation plan for the campus, and so we want to use this year to map out what data we need to start collecting to be prepared for doing that and we will be collecting baseline data for that/setting up ways to collect that data. This will mostly be preparation and pre-planning on the transportation plan.

Students are not expected to know how to do these tasks coming into this internship. Instead students will learn how to perform these tasks through the internship under close direct supervision and training from their professional staff supervisor and mentorship from many different control points and stakeholders on and off the campus.  

This intern has responsibility for collaborating with campus control points and key stakeholders to collect key information needed for the project, to develop draft proposals and budgets, and to solicit feedback from professional staff and other key decision-makers. The professional staff supervisor of this intern is ultimately responsible for the risk assessment, budgeting, and policy compliance. The student’s role is in collecting the information from professional staff, reporting out on that information to the professional staff supervisor, developing draft proposals and budgets, receiving and integrating feedback, and presenting those proposals back to the appropriate campus control points (professional staff) for review and approval or denial.

The intern will collect information on potential risks and liability (from the Campus Risk Manager), ADA guidelines and rules (from the ADA Compliance Officer), budget needs (from the Departmental Director, Business Officer, and other campuses that have done similar programs), and campus policies, practices, and guidelines (Campus Policy Compliance Officer). They will also interview professional staff at other campuses and organizations that have done similar programs to learn from their expertise. Many other professional staff stakeholders may be consulted. This list is not meant to be exhaustive but to serve as an illustration of how the intern will engage with professional staff and how they will be guided by the experience and expertise of professional staff.

The intern will develop relationships with key stakeholders, develop a plan for the implementation of the project thinking through the logistics of the program thoroughly, document best practices they are basing their proposal on, develop a cost-benefit analysis of the proposed program and alternative options, secure key campus approvals after fully incorporating and addressing all feedback from key stakeholders, develop an evaluation program to test the success of the pilot, pilot the program, and develop potential pathways towards program implementation. All of these steps will be under close direct supervision of a professional staff member.

The interns will meet weekly for at least one hour with their direct supervisor throughout the internship. During these meetings, the supervisor will provide training on their tasks for the week and give feedback on their project. Their supervisor will also attend many of the meetings with stakeholders, especially where topics covered or relationships may require added care. All materials developed by the intern will be reviewed and edited by the supervisor. The supervisor will also spend time outside of meeting times with the interns, editing and commenting on drafts for the student intern.

We would prefer to hire a student who is likely to be eligible for work study in the 2024-2025 academic year.  If you are likely to be eligible, please let us know in your cover letter.