From the Dean’s Desk

The Summer of Opportunity 2021

“Gam Zu L’tova” -- let us seize on setbacks and get stronger from them -- has been our motto for the last year.

We have gotten stronger in many unexpected ways. (For an overview, please see the “State of Sy Syms 2021” animated video.) This week is the first anniversary of one of the most important new initiatives we launched during the Covid era: The “Summer of Opportunity” that turned what was a summer of crisis for non-YU students into a summer of strengthening for our students. Substantive summer work is key to deepening real-world skills, to exploring potential new career paths, to gaining confidence and credibility, and to developing a relationship with potential full-time employers. It can give you a rock-solid foundation for getting a fast start toward great jobs and impactful careers. For the summer of 2020, it looked like few students would be able to do so. So a year ago, the crisis sparked a burst of creativity that led us to create major new summer initiatives that 120 YU students tapped to make COVID into a Gam Zu L’tova. For instance, watch a brief video about last summer’s Consulting Force/Innovation Lab (CFIL) initiative.

CFIL

Your Expectations for the Summer?

Right now, early feedback from students is that the coming summer might once again have a difficult internship landscape. Whether or not you already have summer plans, please take one minute to complete our quick anonymous survey to give us a feel for your perception of the coming summer. If you have an internship already, we’d love to hear it! If you don’t, it will help us figure out what opportunities to provide this summer -- potentially including enhanced versions of last summer’s initiatives or our new 2021 initiative described below. All initiatives are open to undergraduates from across YU.

Flash Survey

New this Summer

We are launching the first-ever YU Israel Summer Internship program. We are partnering with the largest startup incubator in Israel, MassChallenge Israel. Students will have preparation sessions in the United States before they leave to Israel, then will do seven-week internships with companies that graduated from MassChallenge’s program. They will be housed at the YU-Israel campus in Jerusalem, where the MassChallenge companies are expected to be located. The interns will have Shabbatonim and shiurim on campus, in addition to a variety of other programming.

• Learn more details about the program.

• The application is open right now, and applications are due on March 25.

• We will be holding an information session about the program on Monday, March 22, at 11:30am (so our Israeli partners can participate). We will record the session and then post it for anyone who can’t make it.

Enhanced Versions of Last Year’s Initiatives

Research apprenticeships v2.0—Top researchers from across YU posted research opportunities and then brought students aboard for the summer to help in important ways. The faculty were able to strengthen and accelerate their research, the students gained research skills and deep knowledge of a domain, and they developed a new lens on what they would be seeing in class the next semester. YU Consulting Force / Innovation Lab (CFIL) v2.0—CFIL began with three weeks of preparation: a week with a consulting simulation, a week of expert sessions from top consultants (from McKinsey, Accenture, BCG, Deloitte, and others), and a wicked-problems hackathon. That was followed by six weeks of high-impact group projects for non-profits (the “Consulting Force” track) or for Israeli startups (the “Innovation Lab” track). As a result of CFIL, students decided to change their majors and career tracks to better fit their capabilities and interests, built life skills, contributed to the Klal, and even received full-time job offers after the summer. We look forward to seeing how we can continue helping you build a great foundation for your future! Dr. Noam Wasserman Dean