Internships, Careers and Graduate School

The Betty and B. Frank Matthews II ’49 Center for Career Development (Matthews Center) along with the Dean Rusk Program in International Studies have worked with German Studies faculty to support fully-paid summer internships in Mannheim and Düsseldorf.

Recent internships have been in the research and development section of Leica Microsystems, in the Department of Strategy and Democracy at the Lord Mayor’s office at the City of Mannheim, and in the departments of EU and International Relations and in Economic Development at the City of Düsseldorf.

Many of our students complete internships while studying abroad in Berlin⁠—where in partnership with Duke University, we maintain working relations with several German companies and organizations.

In Berlin, Davidson students have recently completed internships with Deutsche Bank, International Banking Division, and the Graues Kloster, one of the most prestigious private high schools in Germany. Whether you serve as a teaching assistant at a German high school, such as the Graues Kloster or the Robert-Koch Oberschule in Kreuzberg, or work as a product design intern at Braun GmbH, as one of our most recent graduates did, you are sure to gain valuable job experience while studying in Germany.

Internships may also directly lead to employment after Davidson. Davidson alumna Krista Timeus '10, for example, accepted a position as research assistant at the Ecologic Institute in Berlin, a private not-for-profit think tank for applied environmental research, policy analysis, and consultancy with offices in Berlin, Brussels, Washington, DC, and San Mateo, CA.

Some of the students who have graduated with a major or minor in German have gone on to graduate school in German (at Berkeley, Chapel Hill, Duke, Harvard, Rutgers, Washington University, among others) and many other fields. Others have found employment in a variety of professions in which their language proficiency and international experience have been instrumental to lives of leadership and service. Davidson's 23rd Rhodes scholar, Christan Hunt, was a German major.