Economic Opportunity

The Pershing Fellowship in Non-Profit Leadership (Pershing Fellowship) is a paid summer internship program offered in St. Louis by the Washington University in St. Louis Center for Career Engagement, in partnership with the Pershing Charitable Trust. The program provides experience, programming, and financial support to rising undergraduate Junior & Senior students interested in nonprofit leadership. Pershing Fellows are matched with summer internship roles at nonprofit organizations focused on a range of activities, including social services, education, health care, and arts and culture in the St. Louis region.

The St. Louis Impact Fund supports student-led, mutually beneficial partnerships with St. Louis-area nonprofit and civic organizations. Through grants for new projects and expanded collaborations, the fund helps students and community partners co-design initiatives that address regional priorities and community-identified needs. Community partners help shape project goals and activities, ensuring their knowledge and priorities guide the work while strengthening long-term relationships between WashU and the St. Louis region.

The Gephardt Institute partners with academic departments to offer undergraduate Civic Action Lab courses: applied civic engagement classes that integrate academic, civic, and experiential learning. Civic Action Lab courses teach the practical civic knowledge, skills, responsibilities, and habits of citizen engagement in democracy. Each Civic Action Lab includes experiential learning, community leader guest speakers, opportunities to practice different civic skills, and more!

The Office of Public Scholarship helps WashU faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers share their research and creative work with audiences beyond academia. Through consultations, workshops, funding opportunities, publishing support and media collaborations, the office helps scholars translate complex ideas for broader audiences, build public visibility and extend the reach and impact of their work. It also organizes free public events for the St. Louis community to enjoy on and off of campus.

The Confluence Collaborative for Community Engagement connects WashU scholars and St. Louis community partners to advance community-engaged research, education and practice.

It centers community-identified needs and supports reciprocal, long-term partnerships through research development, community-engaged teaching and learning, partner capacity building, networking, funding resources and recognition of collaborative work. Its goal is to strengthen existing efforts, connect people across disciplines and help ensure university-community partnerships produce meaningful benefits for the region.

The Frick Initiatives invest in ambitious ideas and the people working to put them into practice. They support projects centered on four core pillars: civil discourse, free speech, free and open markets, and personal responsibility. They seek promising projects that move ideas beyond discussion and into practice, whether through education, applied research, public engagement, community partnerships or new approaches not yet imagined.

The Design Futures Public Interest Design (PID) Student Leadership Forum from the Sam Fox School is an interdisciplinary convening that fosters capacity-building for future leaders hoping to use design as a tool for social equity and positive change in and with historically marginalized communities. Design Futures seeks to build the next generation of leadership in design; diversify the ecosystem of public interest design in terms of discipline, race, gender, and beyond; and curate a national network of thought leadership.

Focused on fostering meaningful connections with our local communities, the Office of Community Partnerships (OCP) at the Brown School aims to cultivate, support, and sustain partnerships that bring about transformative social change for local communities and the region. The Brown School has identified priority geographic areas in the most critical need, making a measurable impact through social and economic justice.

The Redevelopment Center at WashU Medicine has helped provide human and social services, diverse housing options, and residential life and safety to surrounding neighborhoods. This is done through initiatives and outreach programs that caters to those communities.

The Small Business Practicum from the Center for Experiential Learning in Olin Business School works to positively impact the St. Louis economy. Undergraduate students work on consulting and recommending best practices aimed at the success of St. Louis businesses. Past initiatives include LifeBridge Partnership, the Salvation Army, and Sew St. Louis. Businesses are able to apply to be included.