MSU Extension internships offer a classroom the size of Michigan
Print
EmailFrom the Upper Peninsula to the Motor City, MSU Extension’s statewide reach gives students the type of experience that few internships can match.
Every summer, Michigan State University students spread out across the state to tackle real challenges alongside educators, specialists, and partners of Michigan State University Extension, the university’s community outreach organization.
Some conduct agricultural research while some analyze data. Others help shape community food systems, lead youth development programming, or champion environmental stewardship efforts. This year alone, undergraduate interns represent disciplines ranging from engineering and data science to forestry and soil sciences.
Together, they illustrate one of MSU’s broadest opportunities for hands-on experience through an internship with Michigan State University Extension, where students apply their knowledge while contributing to work that benefits communities across the state.
Truly experiential learning
Since its inception in 2013, more than 170 undergraduate students have participated in the MSU Extension Undergraduate Internship Program.
While most are Spartans, in 2023 the program also began welcoming select students from partnering schools. Since then, more than 15 students have come from North Carolina A&T State University as well as Michigan’s three tribal colleges: Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College, Keweenaw Bay Ojibwe Community College, and Bay Mills Tribal College.
Interns are placed in the locations and communities that set them up for maximum impact in their area of professional interest, whether that’s in sparsely populated Upper Peninsula towns, a cutting-edge research and extension center, or the heart of a large city like Detroit.
“Our mission is to bring the knowledge and expertise of this university out into the world,” said MSU Extension director Quentin Tyler. “That’s the exact same approach we have for internships. Our goal is to offer students a chance to really put their education into practice.”
Unlike other internships confined by a specific office, MSU Extension placements span countless locations throughout Michigan. Students have worked at research centers, local Extension offices, community organizations, field sites such as the Detroit Partnership for Food, Learning and Innovation, and more.
The result is an experience unlike any other at the university, one that reaches beyond a single academic discipline.
Connecting learning with community
That statewide classroom looks different for every intern, and no two internships look exactly alike. Each reflects the needs of the communities MSU Extension serves as well as the interests and expertise students bring with them.
For Peyton Wensaut — one of the 10 summer interns in 2026 — an internship at the Upper Peninsula Research and Extension Center has been able to combine agricultural research with youth education and Indigenous knowledge.
Working alongside Extension staff, Peyton has contributed to Menominee Flint Corn research, helped develop a tribal medicine garden, and assisted in designing educational experiences for Ojibwe youth visiting the center.
“I have three separate ideas, all involving combining Indigenous agricultural stewardship knowledge with typical institutional practices,” Peyton said.
One of the four MSU Extension summer interns in Alger County, Peyton said the unique opportunity offered by MSU Extension extends far beyond agriculture. Earlier this month, he helped host a school tour coming from Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe, a group coming from a reservation all the way in Baraga.
“I have been helping to incorporate my own cultural knowledge and experiences so the kids get as much out of their farm experience as possible,” he said.
More than just a summer project
A year prior and hundreds of miles away, Diego Andres Piraquive Gomez spent his summer interning with MSU Extension’s campus evaluation team.
As part of his 2025 internship, the Fulbright scholar and alumnus of MSU's Department of Statistics and Probability helped build an interactive organizational data dashboard. Today, it serves as an internal resource for all MSU Extension staff, allowing them to access customized impact data for grant proposals, stakeholder engagement, marketing, and organizational reporting.
Senior MSU Extension specialist Dawn Earnesty, who supervised Diego’s internship, said his unique lens as an intern was one of the driving forces shaping the project.
“The experience working with Diego was amazing,” she said. “Being able to explain the work that Extension does to someone with a strong statistical background, and have them look at the data from a completely different lens than anyone from Extension could… it brings it to life.”
Earnesty has been supervising interns as a preceptor since the program’s start more than a decade ago. She has mentored international students, local students, and students from across the state from a variety of backgrounds: public health, nutritional sciences, biostatistics, computer science, and even communications.
She said Diego’s experience is exactly what MSU Extension’s internship program is designed to encourage: meaningful work they can launch a career with, while creating work that continues to serve MSU Extension’s mission long after an internship ends.
As for Diego, his portfolio of work (and the glowing reference he earned from Earnesty) recently landed him a coveted role as a finance and business intelligence analyst at the University of Colorado Anschutz.
“We know how smart and capable our interns are, and we know how important an internship can be for someone’s career,” said Tyler. “That’s why we trust our interns with real, meaningful work. Future employers appreciate and look for that.”
Learning that lasts
At MSU Extension, no two internships look exactly alike, but they all share a commitment to real-world impact.
“An Extension internship is unique because there are so many different facets of Extension work,” said Earnesty. “The interns get exposed to such a wide variety of opportunities.”
As the internship program continues to grow, the partnership between students and MSU Extension will continue to as well — one internship, community, and project at a time.
“Sometimes people think of internships as a chance to shadow someone or help with the small tasks that keep an office running,” Tyler said. “That’s not what we do. Our interns are conducting research, building tools, designing educational experiences, and helping solve real problems in communities across Michigan. They’re helping change the world from day one.”
