Mathew D’Entremont knew how important it was to have an internship experience on his résumé. But as a psychology major, he was also aware that paid internship opportunities are typically not as plentiful as they are for, say, engineering students.
Thanks to the Moloney Student Fellowship Fund, however, D’Entremont was able to take an unpaid internship at a Lowell nonprofit organization — while receiving a $2,250 stipend.
“It was nice to get that experience while also earning some money,” says D’Entremont, who was an intern during the spring semester of his junior year at the Coalition for a Better Acre (CBA), a community development corporation in Lowell’s Acre neighborhood.
Former Chancellor Jacquie Moloney ’75, ’92 and her husband, Ed Moloney, established the fund so students can accept unpaid internships with nonprofits, campus initiatives, entrepreneurial ventures and other opportunities.
D’Entremont, who is minoring in marketing, worked with Resource Development and Communications Manager Rebecca Ludvino on editing monthly CBA newsletters, developing program descriptions and helping with other research projects. Working in person one day a week and online other days, he says he developed his organization and time-management skills.
D’Entremont had been working with the Career & Co-op Center to find an internship and learned about the fellowship opportunity in an email from Greg Denon, associate dean of student affairs for career development.
“I didn’t know much about the CBA before the internship,” the Malden, Massachusetts, native says. “It was good to learn about an organization like that in the city where I go to school.”
A first-generation college student, D’Entremont visited UML as a high school junior and fell in love with its location on the Merrimack River. Originally a mathematics major, he switched to psychology in his sophomore year.
He now has an internship experience to add to a résumé that’s chock-full of extracurricular activities: Pair Up-Program, Outdoor Adventure Program, Japanese Student Association, Korean Student Association, MASSPIRG and River Hawk Scholars Academy.
“Coming into college, I wanted to try many different things and meet a lot of people,” D’Entremont says. “I feel like I accomplished that from the start. But now that I’m getting closer to graduating, I’m more focused on internships and the job search.”