The Secular Student Alliance is seeking applicants for its northern California Campus Organizing Internship (COI). This internship pays $10/hr. and all expenses are covered. This internship will require approximately 10 hours a week. The internship will start in mid to late March and last through late May or early June of 2008 with an option to extend the internship or restart it in the fall. We are willing to be somewhat flexible in terms of time and stipend to meet academic requirements.

While approximately half of the work for this position can be done from any location of the Campus Organizing Intern's choosing, the other half will involve working directly on campuses in northern California. Again, all travel costs will be covered. The position offers a highly flexible schedule.

The Campus Organizing Intern will help organize and support students who do not see theism as the source of morality--this includes atheists, agnostics, humanists, brights, rationalists and other non-theists. Duties will include working in person and remotely with student groups on campuses in northern California to improve their operations, provide them with resources and network them with each other and the broader secular movement. SSA senior staff will provide training, direction, and assistance with all of these tasks. The COI will also work to start groups on campuses without groups via flyering, tabling and networking. The position will involve some traveling, public speaking, record keeping, lots of phone and email communication, and some possible resource development.

The COI will work very closely with our full-time Field Director who is based at our headquarters in Albany, NY. The COI will work in northern California. Most collaboration with the Field Director will be via telephone, instant messenger and e-mail. However, the COI will need to briefly travel to Albany for training. We will work to ensure that this travel does not interrupt the COI's academic schedule. As with all travel, all expenses will be covered by the Secular Student Alliance.

There are many intangible benefits to this position. You will have the option to do at least some of the work in the comfort of your own home. You will have the opportunity to make enormous progress in furthering freethought and humanist goals. You will gain job experience involving more responsibility and independence than most jobs for college students offer. Finally, the COI position is a potential springboard to an ongoing career in the freethought and humanist movement.

Strong candidates will have direct experience with campus activism. Someone with experience leading or helping to lead a student group would be an especially strong candidate. She or he will have strong speaking and writing skills. The candidate will enjoy collaborating with people of different ages, ethnic groups, sexual orientations, and philosophical or political beliefs.

The Secular Student Alliance hopes to select a Campus Organizing Intern in March of 2008 and have him or her start shortly thereafter. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, so apply soon.

If you would like to apply for this internship, please e-mail Alison Bates at hr@secularstudents.org with your name, address, phone number, best times to call, the text of your resume in the body of your email, and answers to the screening questions below. Please keep the formatting (e.g. bold, italics, off sets) to a minimum. Please do not send attachments. We will send a list of screening questions to help us learn more about you. Be sure to specify that you are interested in the Northern California Campus Organizing Internship (we are also seeking applicants for a Southern California Campus Organizing Internship).

Our mission is to organize, unite, educate and serve students and student communities that promote the ideals of scientific and critical inquiry, democracy, secularism, and human-based ethics. The best candidates will have a passionate, personal desire to see the realization of this mission. This position is being funded by the Humanist Community (www.humanists.org), the Vital Spark Foundation, and the American Humanist Association (www.americanhumanist.org).

The SSA was founded in 2000 and is a registered 501(c)(3) educational non-profit. 

Screening Questions: 

1. Do you trust yourself to work at your home, or other locations of your choosing, without direct supervision?

2. Do you live in Northern California?

3. Are you willing to answer phone calls, e-mails or instant messages within 24 hours, during the business week, unless prior notice is given?

4. Are you willing to travel to campuses in Northern California?

5. Are you willing to write, speak, and present yourself professionally when necessary?

6. When will you be available to start?

7. Can you prove that you are either a citizen of the United States, or a legal worker?

8. Have you been involved in some form of student activism? If so, briefly describe.

9. Where are you a student?

10 .What are you studying?

11. Are you willing to be publicly known as a supporter of SSA's cause (the two most controversial elements of that cause being: 1. promoting respect and equal rights for atheists, agnostics, humanists and others that do not believe in a god AND 2. deep skepticism of the supernatural)?

12. Do you have any reservations about collaborating with people who are much older or younger than you, or are of a different ethnic group, sexual orientation, or philosophical or political belief?

13. What is your college grade point average? Describe the scale your school uses if different from the standard 4.0 scale.

14. Why do you want this internship?

15. What experience(s) from your activist/volunteer or paid work do you expect to help you most in this internship? Why?

16. From what you know about the SSA, what do you like best?

17. From what do you know about the SSA, what would you most like to see improve?

18. With what, if any, student freethought or humanist organizations are you currently involved? How about adult organizations? Do you plan to attend any local student/adult organizations in the near future?

19. Please give the names and phone numbers of two references. Please pick two of the three categories for the two references you give:
#1 a work reference (i.e., people you have worked for, or with)
#2 a references from your activist/volunteer work
#3 an academic reference

Let us know which category each reference is from.