Volunteering opportunities, work, or internships give you first-hand exposure to life in the field, as well as experience providing service to people. It also helps you demonstrate interest and commitment to the field.
Most professional programs consider hands-on exposure to your field of interest to be an important part of the application. Some professional programs have very specific experiential requirements. PA programs often require a certain number of hours of direct patient care; MD/PhD programs expect significant research experiences; and dental schools prefer applicants who have worked or volunteered extensively in a dental office.
URI students have a large variety of volunteer and internships opportunities available to them – both on-campus and off. Some of these include working in a research lab, serving as an EMT with URI EMS, a sports medicine internship with one of our teams, volunteering as an aide at nearby South County Hospital, or shadowing a local provider.
URI Campus Services
Clinical and Other Opportunities in the Field
- Medical Assistant (MA) with OrthoRI (certification not required, on the job training provided)
- Summer Health Professions Education Program (funded)
- Medical Scribing (paid work–various locations in RI): Brown Emergency Medicine, Scribe America
- URI Emergency Medical Services (Volunteer)
Hospital and Clinic Volunteering and/or Work
- South County Hospital (Wakefield)
- Rhode Island Hospital and Hasbro Children’s Hospital (Providence)
- Newport Hospital
- The Miriam Hospital (Providence)
- Care New England Hospitals (various locations in RI: Butler, Kent, Memorial, Providence Center, VNA, Women & Infants)
- VA Medical Center (Providence)
- Rhode Island Free Clinic (Providence)
- Clínica Esperanza/Hope Clinic (Providence)
- CNA Training Programs in RI
- EMT Training Programs in RI
- RWJBarnabas Health, New Jersey, Medical Scribe Program
- Thurndermist Health Center (RI)
Underrepresented Groups in Medicine
- Brown University Medical School Rhode to Medicine Summer Pathway Program Summer 2025
- Brown University Medical School Research-Clinical Experiences in Neurology and Neurosurgery Pathway Program Summer 2025
- The Leadership Alliance Summer Research Early Identification Program
- Summer Health Professions Education Program (SHPEP)
- Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Summer Internships in Biological Sciences in Public Health
- Building Diversity in Biomedical Science (Tufts)
- VCU Diversity P.A.T.H.S. (Virginia Commonwealth University)
- UCONN Health Summer Medical/Dental Preparatory Program (MCAT or DAT Prep Course or Basic Medical Science Course).
Dental Opportunities
- Gateway to Dentistry, Rutgers School of Dental Medicine
- Rhode Island Mission of Mercy
- Rutgers School of Dental Medicine, Gateway to Dentistry (January and late May/early June)
- Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine, Summer Scholars Program
- Summer Enrichment Program, University of Detroit Mercy School of Dentistry
Research Opportunities
URI Opportunities
- URI/Brown INBRE Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship
- URI NSF EPSCoR Summer Undergrad Research
- URI Undergraduate Research Initiative: Awards for Scholarly, Creative, and Artistic Projects
- URI Coastal Fellows Program
- URI Science and Engineering Fellows
Other Opportunities
- Boston University (BU) Summer Program in Neuroscience (SPIN)
- Mass General Brigham (MGH) Cancer Center, the Cancer Outcomes Research and Education (CORE) Program: Clinical Research Coordinators (full time roles for graduating Seniors or Alumni)
- UConn: Undergraduate Summer Research Internship Program in Biological and Biomedical Sciences
- Harvard School of Public Health Summer Program in Biostatistics & Computational Biology
- Harvard School of Public Health Summer Internships in Biological Sciences in Public Health
- Health Equity Scholars, Brown University School of Public Health
- Public Health Scholars, RI Department of Public Health
- UMass Medical Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity
- Broad Institute at MIT & Harvard (MD/PhD-specific)
- Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology Summer Institute
- Joslin Diabetes Center Summer Research Program
- AMGEN Scholars (USA, Japan, & Europe summer research program)
- Comprehensive list of national summer research opportunities
- Comprehensive list of MD/PhD-specific national summer research opportunities
- National Institutes of Health Summer Internship Program in Biomedical Research
- National Institutes of Health Undergraduate Scholarship Program
- National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)
- University of Alabama at Birmingham Summer Research Programs for Undergraduates
Community Service & Volunteering
- Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island (refugee and immigrant services)
- Idealist
- JonnyCake Center of Westerly
- Science & Math Investigative Learning Experiences (SMILE) (URI)
- Sprout and STEM (SAS)–Providence school volunteering.
- Southern Rhode Island Volunteers