Do you want to do a senior thesis? If so, you should start in the spring of your Junior year or the summer after your Junior year. Talk to faculty to find out what ideas they have for thesis projects. Please see https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/computerscience/honors.html for recent honors projects.
Funding for on-campus summer work may be available through grants that individual faculty members have or from the College. This funding is available to students of all years, not just honors students. To apply for College funding, go to https://www.mtholyoke.edu/cdc/internships/funding. The deadline is February 24. An information session about UAF funding will be held on November 28, 12:00-1:30 in Blanchard. A workshop on how to apply for funding will be held on December 3, 7:00 - 8:30 in Cleveland L1.
NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). REU sites bring together undergraduate students from around the country to work together over the summer. Students apply to specific programs whose research interests them. Funding generally includes a stipend, travel and housing expenses. Available only to US Citizens or permanent residents. Deadlines vary, but could be as early as January.
Partial list of past students who have worked on REU projects:
CRA Distributed Research Experience for Undergraduates (DREU). This project is particularly aimed at underrepresented groups in Computer Science, of which women are one. In this program, a student will work with a faculty member in a graduate student research lab on research. Students and faculty both apply to DREU. DREU serves as a matchmaker putting students and faculty with similar interests together. Funding includes a stipend, travel and housing. Open to both US citizens and non-US citizens. Deadline: February 15, 2013.
Partial list of past students who have worked on DREU projects:
Institute for Broadening Participation. The Pathways to Science web site has a search engine to help you find summer research opportunities. This is a great resource as they maintain a database of many NSF and NASA-funded opportunities, as well as others that are harder to find out about.
Computing Community Consortium provides a centralized listing of research opportunities.
Program in Neural Computation This is an NIH-funded program run jointly by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. In 2010, Surabhi Gupta was funded through this program and worked with David Touretzky at Carnegie Mellon University.
MIT Summer Resarch Program. This is an opportunity to work in a research lab at MIT under the supervision of a professor, postdoc or advanced graduate student. They are particularly targetting underpresented groups: African Americans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans and Puerto Ricans. This is open to international students. Deadline: January 25.
Summer Research Program in Genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Must be a US citizen or permanent resident. Must be an underrepresented minority.
MURF Undergraduate Research Fellowship. Research opportunity at Caltech. Must be a US citizen or permanent resident. Should be interested in pursuing a PhD or an MD/PhD. Deadline: January 13, 2013.
Amgen Scholars in Science and Biotechnology. Research opportunity at numerous locations in the US, including Univeristy of California, Berkeley, Caltech, and Columbia. Must be a US citizen or permanent resident. Should be interested in pursuing a PhD or an MD/PhD. Deadline: February 1, 2013.
Princeton University has an intensive laboratory research experience in Molecular and Quantitative & Computational Biology. Open to international students. Deadline: February 1, 2013.
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center runs a Quantitative and Physical Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program. Must be a US citizen or have an F1 visa. Deadline: February 9, 2013.
Summer Research Expeditions in Computational Sciences, Systems and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University is an intensive ten-week program of research and instruction (essentially an REU but with a slightly different name). Students receive research experience under the guidance of faculty and graduate student mentors. The students will also receive classes on ethics in research and technical communication. Participants will have the opportunity to tour a local government laboratory and a private company. Housing will be provided and a stipend of $4,500 for the 10-week period will be paid. Deadline to apply is February 1, 2013. Open to international students. Includes housing and a stipend.
Summer Institute in Parallel Computational Science is a program run by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. It offers opportunities to work in high-performance computing aimed at scientific discovery and modeling. Must have completed your sophomore year. Open to international students who are eligible to work in the US. Deadline: February 1, 2013.
Boren special initiative for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) majors funds up to $8,000 for summer study (minimum of 8 weeks) for students majoring in the STEM fields. The Boren is funded by the National Security Education Program (NSEP), which focuses on geographic areas, languages, and fields of study deemed critical to U.S. national security. In exchange for scholarship funding, all Boren Scholars must agree to the NSEP Service Requirement. For U.S. citizens only. To apply for the Boren, contact Liz Mandeville, MHC’s National Fellowship and Graduate School Advisor at emandevi@mtholyoke.edu.
Google Summer of Code. Google sponsors a program that pairs students with open source software projects. Funding provides a stipend. Students work independently, not at the site of the organization they are working for. This summer's website is not up yet, but you can view last year's at http://code.google.com/soc/. Deadline: Probably April.
Google. Google has many opportunities for students, like summer internships, Android Camp, and others at locations in the U.S. and abroad. Cathy Zhang participated in one in 2010. Gabby Snyder participated in 2011. Deadlines vary. Some are very early.
Microsoft. Microsoft has a large summer internship program. Deadline: not posted. Microsoft also has a special internship program intended for first-year or sophomore students.
IBM Research has great opportunities for undergraduate researchers in several locations in the US. There is a research internship particularly directed at undergraduate women, with a deadline of February 1, 2013.
NASA. NASA has lots of opportunities for summer internships and semeseter internships across many science and engineering disciplines.
Department of Homeland Security. Open to US citizens entering their junior or senior year.
MassTech Intern Partnership matches students studying in Massachusets with firms in the tech sector within Massachusetts. Open to international students.
Code for America provides internships where students work on technical projects as a public service, often working with local governments that lack the resources to hire a professional technical staff. These internships are unpaid.
Other organizations offering internships (that we know of):
The Career Development Center has more information about internship opportunities and holds a variety of workshops to help you get an internship:
Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth is a summer program for students in grades 2-12. They offer courses in many fields, including computer science. For Summer 2013, they are offering CS courses in Fundamentals of Computer Science, Foundations of Programming, Introduction to Robotics, Data Structures and Algorithms, and Advanced Cryptology. Sessions are held in various locations around the country. They have both Teaching Assistant and Research Assistant opportunities. This is open to international students who have an F-1 visa.
There are also opportunities that take only a few weeks during the summer that may be of interest.
Google Android Camp is a one week program (June 9-15, 2013) where students learn how to build Android apps. All expenses paid! This is open to both US citizens and international students. You must be a first-year or sophomore student planning a CS major with at least one year of Java experience. Deadline: March 17.
Google Chrome Academy is a one week program (June 16-22, 2013) where students learn how to build web applications and Chrome Packaged Applications. All expenses paid! This is open to both US citizens and international students. You must be a first-year or sophomore student planning a CS major with at least one year of experience with Javascript, CSS and HTML. Deadline: March 17.