UW Farm Internship Information

Requirements

The UW Farm hosts internships every quarter. Internships are open to graduate and undergraduate students.

Deadlines: please submit a cover letter and resume the quarter before you intend to gain a position. Preference will be given to earlier applicants.

Spring 2025 Internship Application window: March 1 – March 14, 2025
Summer 2025 Internship Application window: May 19 – June 1, 2025
Fall 2025 Internship Application window: September 1-14, 2025

Required background:
  • Some experience in farming or gardening is required for all internships.
  • Previous volunteer experience with UW Farm is highly recommended.
Examples of previous experience:
  • Completion of CELE/service learning experience on the UW Farm
  • Completion of ENVIR240, The Urban Farm, and/or ENVIR340 Farm Practicum
  • Involvement in Dirty Dozen Farm club for multiple quarters
  • Farming and Gardening experience at another farm or garden and at least two volunteer shifts at the campus farm
Learning Goals developed with your faculty advisor and/or the Farm Manager are required for credit. See position descriptions detailed below.
To apply:
  • Email both persis@uw.edu with two attachments: Resume and Cover letter, and the title of position you’re
  • Attachments must have a title that includes name and title of position
  • Please note that incomplete applications will not be considered

Positions Descriptions

Paid Internship

 

Community supported agriculture (CSA)

Dani Elenga Urban Farming and Environment Internship – Filled for 2025

  • Commitment: Spring, Summer, and Fall/three quarters/full season, requires 15 hours on the farm/week (Spring & Fall), 30-40 hours/week (Summer)
  • Primary responsibility is taking an active role in growth and distribution of organic, seasonal, highly nutritious food for our CSA community
  • A focus area is the distribution of produce to households, with staffing of CSA pick-up day a priority
  • You will learn how to pack produce for weekly CSA pick-up, facilitate community engagement, and develop relationships with shareholders
  • Record keeping will be assigned, tracking volume and shareholder participation
  • You will learn a minimum of the following – National Organic Production, as administered by WSDA crop cultivation and practices, plant families, IPM, harvest techniques, how to read a crop plan, soil blocking and more.
  • You will be assigned the UW Farm Student Handbook for your reading and learning about UW Farm production, history and practices
  • Requirements: must be a current UW Student, undergraduate or graduate, must demonstrate previous experience with farming or gardening

View More Information

Unpaid 10-week Internships for Credit, or Not for Credit

 

Beekeeping Internship

OPEN Spring, Summer and Fall 2025

  • Commitment: Two quarters minimum, with priority given to candidates available for Spring, Summer, and Fall (Full Season). Requires two, 3-hour shifts on the farm/week.
  • Primary responsibility is to learn from the farm’s Beekeeping Mentor how to care for our population of honey bees
  • This internship also includes starting seeds, transplanting pollinator friendly plants and annual renovation of our pollinator plantings at all three of our farm sites.
  • You will learn beekeeping terms and hive care and maintenance and perhaps harvesting our honey.
  • This internship also encourages building connections with some of the courses that interact with the hives and giving tours for interested parties.

Environmental Justice Internship

May be Offered- Winter 2026

  • Commitment: One quarter minimum, two, 3-hour shifts on the farm/week
  • Primary responsibility is to remove barriers to participation in farm activities and to enable a diverse population to participate in and have access to the outdoor spaces at the farm sites.
  • The goal is to research grants and resources to increase access on the farm sites and to connect the farm with a more diverse population.
  • This internship also encourages building connections with and hosting disability and minority groups on campus including, but not limited to the Doris Duke Scholars program, First Nations RSO, and other RSOs.

Farm Education Internship

OPEN – Spring, Summer, and Fall quarters in 2025

  • Commitment: One quarter minimum, two 3-hour shifts on the farm/week plus leading tours
  • Primary responsibilities include learning the history of the farm, its practices and operations in order to increase outreach and build community. You are the “face” of the farm.
  • Areas of focus are: updating the website, creating signage, updating the UW Farm Handbook, tabling at events, editor for the farm’s newsletter, The Weekly Dirt, and/or training other farm guides.
  • You will learn the complete history of a campus urban farm, the student farm movement. Graduate level – suggested reading, Fields of Learning, and environmental pedagogy articles.

Food Safety Internship

May be Offered- Summer and Fall 2025

  • Commitment: One quarter minimum, two, 3-hour shifts on the farm/week
  • Must be a graduate student
  • Primary responsibilities are updating our Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), food safety manual, signs, logs and performing a food safety workshop at the end of your internship.
  • You will learn the national standard for food safety protocols on farms in the US, how the UW Farm practices food safety on harvest days and in the field, and what is necessary to pass a food safety inspection by WSDA.
  • The culminating goal of this internship is to give training workshops to courses and volunteers on steps for preventing and reducing food poisoning and conduct a “mock recall.”

General Farm Internship

OPEN – Offered Spring, Summer and Fall Quarters in 2025

  • Commitment: One Quarter minimum, two 3-hour shifts on the farm/week
  • Primary responsibility is to join the farm team and take an active role in growing food for the community, campus dining and the food pantry.
  • A focus area is production or field work and harvests
  • You will learn, hands-on how to grow, harvest and distribute produce on an urban farm.
  • You will learn a minimum of the following – crop rotation, direct seeding, transplanting, application of soil amendments, tomato growing including trellising and pruning, plant families, IPM, harvest techniques, how to read a crop plan, soil blocking and more.
  • You will be assigned the UW Farm Student Handbook for your reading and learning about UW Farm production, history and practices

Food Security Internship

May be Offered in – Summer and Fall 2025

  • Commitment: One Quarter minimum, two 3-hour shifts on the farm/week plus independent remote projects
  • Primary responsibility is to be the point person between the UW Farm and the UW Food Pantry.
  • Participate in harvests each week, prepare, catalog, calculate market value, and record the volume of produce donated to address food insecurity on the UW Campus.
  • You will learn how to record food data, how to harvest, wash and pack produce according to organic and food safety regulations

Informatics Internship

May be Offered- Winter 2026

  • Commitment: One quarter minimum, two 3-hour shifts/week on the farm plus independent remote projects
  • This internship is available to Information School students or those wishing to help improve and create a platform for optimizing the UW Farm impact and assessing best use of historical digital records, social media, educational information and presence by reviewing and optimizing in any one of those categories.
  • You will support the farm team in harvest record-keeping and data management
  • The goal is to make UW Farm resources more accessible and to increase efficiency.

Nutrition Analysis Internship

Filled: Spring and Summer or Summer and Fall

  • Commitment: 2 Quarter minimum
  • Must be a graduate student
  • Primary responsibility is to analyze the produce grown at the UW Farm for its nutritional content and evaluate the UW Farm CSA program for nutritional data as compared to health recommendations by the USDA.
  • The goal is to determine if the farm’s CSA program provides sufficient nutritional content required for a single individual, or more. You will learn nutritional requirements of a population, individual and national standards and to what extent raw produce may affect human health.

Nutrition Education Internship

OPEN: Summer and Fall quarters 2025

  • Commitment: one quarter minimum, 2, 3-hour shifts/week plus independent remote work
  • Primary responsibility is researching and writing for The Weekly Dirt newsletter sections, The Nutrition Corner and This Week’s Recipes and social media. The goal is to educate, inspire, encourage engagement with highly nutritious, locally grown produce.
  • Each week the intern researches a produce item that is grown by the farm and posts a recipe and nutrition and/or cultural information. Another project is to produce a series of cooking, baking or informative user-friendly videos for the UW Farm YouTube and Instagram.
  • By the end of the internship you will add your work to, “An Urban Farm Journey with Food, recipes and nutrition information and reflections gleaned by student interns at the UW Farm.”  You will learn nutritional content of various vegetables and fruits grown in the PNW and also cultural backgrounds of food grown around the world.

Vermiculture Internship

OPEN: Spring, Summer, Fall quarters 2025

  • Commitment: two quarter minimum two, 3-hour shifts/week
  • Primary responsibilities are to care for and monitor the worms who eat our food waste at the UW Farm. This internship will help the farm and campus food production be more environmentally sustainable.
  • You will help the farm model a circular urban food system. The organic vermicompost will be used on the UW Farm to grow food and offered to UW Grounds.

If seeking credit, UW Farm interns are required to complete a minimum of 3 hours of farm work on the farm per week per credit (or 30 hours total required for one credit).

The minimum hours per week for all interns is two shifts, for credits or not for credits. Six hours must be performed in the field on the UW Farm sites each quarter, or ten weeks, with the farm’s crew and volunteers. All other activities: off-site meetings, remote work, outreach, computer work, writing, etc., are in addition to six hours per week in the field. Additional hours vary according to the internship.


Funding Opportunities for Paid Internships

The University of Washington has a number of programs for supporting internships. Visit the sites below to learn more about opportunities for paid internships. Note that many deadlines are as far as 2 quarters before internship start dates, so plan ahead!

 

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