Illinois Legislative Staff Intern Program

Alright.

Welcome, everybody. My name is Rebecca Johnson and I'm part of the admissions team here at the University of Illinois Springfield. Before we get into today's presentation, I have a few housekeeping items I'd like to go over so that you are aware this webinar is being recorded and will be made available for your viewing early next week so that we don't feel like you have to take frantic notes. Within your share screen, you will see there is a closed captioning option on the top bar. In the right corner, you'll see a little CC button.

That will turn on the closed captioning. There's also an option to make the video full screen if you would like to do that as well. If you need to resync your audio or video at any point, just refresh your browser and that should clean things up for questions. We'd love to hear your questions in the chat. Feel free to post those throughout. We're going to be looking at those questions at the end of the session, so we will put those on pause until a later point and then we'll be happy to go through those. I know there's many folks here joining us today and we're happy to have you so with that.

That I'd like to introduce you to Barbara Van **** Brown from our illicit program. Thank you for joining us today.

Welcome. I am so happy to have so many of you on the call. Today, I want to go over our internship opportunities with the Illinois Legislative Staff Intern program. Let me begin by saying that these legislative internships are full-time.

And so for any of you that may be international students with an F1 visa, if you are here as a student, you would not be eligible for the legislative internships. I would refer you to the Graduate Public Service intern program as another option.

Um, if you're an international student and you are looking at an OPT?

Then you are eligible to participate in this program and so you may want to take a look at it. This would be again, it is a full time internship and so you would have to have the F1 visa with an OPT training option. Alright, let's get started talking about what? What is alsip? So the purpose of icip is to recruit and who are we?

Recruiting graduate level, diverse experience and backgrounds and the reason is to provide you with some experience with the legislative process.

We want to give you an opportunity to gain legislative experience. Working for the legislature is a little bit different than anything else that you might ever do. It is unique experience, and so our positions are with the partisan and the nonpartisan staff. We have 20 positions on partisan staff, so there are five positions with the Senate Republicans, five with the House Republicans, five with the Senate Democrats, and five with the House.

Democrats. In addition, there are four positions with the Commission on Government forecasting and accountability. Those are our nonpartisan positions, and the purpose is, of course, to provide the legislative leaders with research and also professional staff assistants. So it's it's really.

You know a given a take, you know you're getting experience and they're getting support and a new a fresh set of eyes looking, looking at the legislative process.

Elsif intern benefits. Currently our interns are earning 2500 per month. That's the stipend and that's before taxes and that will continue for spring 2023. We still have 9 positions that are available to fill for the spring, and we have a N1 deadline for those positions. And then in addition to that we have.

Positions that will be all 24 will be available for the fall of 2023 and I'm excited to report that we are looking at $3300 per month, so an increase in the stipend for the fall of 2023 and we're really excited to be able to offer that. In addition, you get 4 graduate credits, 2 credits in the Fall, 2 credits in the spring, and of course we cover all of your tuition and your fees with the exception.

Of a four dollar student student Grant fee which can be waived so it is tuition free.

Both tuition and fees free.

We will cover your student insurance. Some of our interns just choose to waive that, but that is an option so you you can choose to have us cover your student insurance. And actually it is a 10 month placement at this point. I apologize, that's an error. It had been a 10.5 month placement, but it is now a 10 month placement.

Program structure, work responsibilities. It's a full time internship. As I mentioned earlier, you're assigned to each of the partisan Staffs. Um. So there's five as I mentioned earlier, and then four with the Commission.

You would be attending orientation, um, there's a couple of days at the very beginning of your internship where we Orient you to campus and then also to the capital.

And then in addition to that, there is a seminar which meets several times in the fall, 4 to 6 classes. Usually it's a Friday afternoon that route. Most recently that's how they've been doing it, our Friday afternoons. And so there are a lot of speakers that come to those seminars. And in addition, you are required it is a graded class. So there are three papers. And then of course your participation in the class is.

Is also part of the grading process. The two credits that you get in the spring are for the actual legislative experience and so you're it's basically a pass fail or credit, no credit for the spring.

So what does an ill SIP intern do on partisan staff? They perform the same duties as staff members. They analyze bills prior to committee, evaluate budget requests. They research the different issues that are coming before the General Assembly. Sometimes there's a problem with the bill and they need to figure out, you know, they have to do some research to figure out what language needs to be changed.

Um, there's drafting of the bills while we do have the legislative reference Bureau that does all of our, all of the drafting for the General Assembly, all the technical drafting, the there's more generic drafting kind of a pre draft that goes to the NLRB. And so you, you would be a part of that process as well on the communication side. So some of our positions are research and appropriation and some of our positions.

Are more press and communication. So you're basically providing communication services for several legislators. If you're on the House side, it's a few more, three to four, and then for the Senate, it's one or two members that you're providing press for. So then you're doing press releases, you're doing social media, you're doing website development, updating maintenance.

And then just providing general support for the legislative leaders and the Members.

What does an elsif intern do with the Commission with cockpit, the Commission on Government forecasting and accountability.

With the nonpartisan position, it's primarily doing legal research and writing skills, and you do that independently and then you also work as a team. So there might be, you know, a fairly large project that gets divided up among the different research folks, and then you would be a part of that team that's completing that project. Tasks would include legislative memos, research reports, publications sometimes.

They're also doing what they call pension notes, so, you know, it's specific to the legislation. There's a specific kind of legislative memo as a pension note that that the Commission is responsible for producing.

Um to to apply you're going to complete the UIS graduate application online. So yes, you would be applying to Graduate School at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Most of our applicants are non degree seeking, but you can be a degree seeking student and still pursue an ill SIP internship if you have questions about how that looks for your particular major you.

And certainly reach out to me and I can give you a little bit more information about that. But basically when you go through the graduate application, you'll hit a point where it says, you know ilsac and you just click on that. And when you click on that, there's a separate application process that is included. So basically you're doing a lot of the same things that you would do for our other internship opportunities. You need to submit a resume. You need to submit.

There is an NSA portion that you need to submit transcripts which you know as a non degree you wouldn't be required to submit transcripts, but you would for our program and then in addition to that 3 letters of recommendation. So those are our requirements. And then in addition to that, if you're applying to the Commission on Government forecasting and accountability, there's actually two separate applications. So if.

It's the same application, but kind. It kind of goes two different directions. If you're applying for partisan staff, you don't have to do an additional writing sample. If you are applying for the Commission on Government forecasting and accountability, there is an additional writing sample and it would be more like a researcher. Term paper with citations is what they're looking for, for that additional writing sample applications are due March, are due November the 1st.

For um interviews.

Um, that would take place immediately after that. I'm saying December the 6th through the 8th, but it could be earlier depending on you know how quickly we get the turnaround. We're looking at placement generally it's early January, but I have heard from some of our legislative liaisons and those are the folks that supervise and work with our interns that because session is going to be you know.

Coming on pretty quickly that they would like to have an earlier start date for applicants that are eligible to do that. And what I mean by that is that you would need to have completed your undergraduate degree.

Prior to your start date. So we need to actually have your transcript in hand. So for those of you that might be graduating in December, you you would not be able to start in December, but you would be able to start in January, you're still eligible to apply. So I don't want there to be any confusion about that. You're still eligible to to apply even if you're graduating in December because we can have you start in January. OK then for.

Are for the fall, so our fall placements and normally we try to fill all of our positions in the fall, so that will be a March 15th deadline and then interviews will be April the 11th through the 15th.

Followed by um.

Start date of September 1 and five, and the reason why that's not one and two is because it's falling over the Labor Day weekend. So it's the Friday before Labor Day and the Tuesday after Labor Day are the two days of orientation.

OK, so I'm ready for questions. It looks like we have a few here.

Can we apply for Alsip if we applied for GSI? Yes, you can. Is F1 mandatory for isip?

For ill slip, if you're an international student, you have to have an F1.

And you also have to have an opt, so it has to be for training only. If you are applying as an F1 student then you would not be eligible for Alsip. And the reason is that F1 students are limited to 20 hours, so there is no way for you to participate in the program.

And while you can apply for both GA, GSI and Isip, you cannot participate in them all at the same time. However, if you participate as a GA or a GSI and complete that and complete your graduate degree, for instance, and then want to do Alsip, you certainly can.

So we often have, um, our interns that complete the complete their graduate degree and then do Alsip. Or we've also had it the other way where we've had some that have. They weren't sure what they wanted to do degree wise when they graduated. And so they went ahead and did ilsac kind of is that interim between undergraduate and Graduate School and then they pursued a degree, the four credits that you get for.

Sup can be treated as electives and um, while there may be limitations by individual programs, I know that political science accepts those credits, legal studies accepts those credits, and generally you'll find even outside of of UIS. For instance, with Alsip, we're not limited to US students. So for instance, I could have a student that was pursuing you.

Degree at NYU that wanted to do the ELSIF internship. They could take you know if they're doing online classes or there's a way for them to be able to continue or take a leave of absence. You know to from their process of their degree and then do this and then go back and finish their degree. The credits can be, you know, you'd have to check with the program to be sure but you know technically those 4 credits.

Would be applied to to a degree at any college or university program that will accept them.

All right.

Do are there any other questions for me?

All right.

Great.

I don't see anything else coming through, so thank you very much Barbara. And again, we will post this recording on our website within the next week or so. So I hope everyone has a great day.

Alright, thank you so much.