Fellowship Programs are the new big thing for college graduates. There are quite a few highly competitive programs like Teach for America, New York City Teaching Fellows, and The New Teacher Project that focus on turning new college grads into teachers in low-income public schools. What about coaching? Athletics has become significantly linked to education in America, and it is also one of the few areas where low-income schools can be on par with their well funded counterparts. Sounds to us like there’s an opportunity to initiate change there. Coaches often seem more accessible to students than teachers are, so why not put the same types of young leaders that are being recruited as teachers in coaching positions at high needs schools and see what happens? That’s what Philip Kovoor wants to do with National Coaching Fellows, the non-profit organization that he recently started.
When we first came across the internship posting for National Coaching Fellows, we got really excited. What an opportunity! Then we got nervous and asked ourselves, is this real? They have no website, they don’t turn up in a single Google search (well now they do), and their founder, Philip Kovoor, appears to have just graduated from the University of Chicago last year. No, we’re not skeptical of U of C, but can a new grad really start up a non-profit fresh out of college? Why not? We’re all about supporting college students and new grads in their employment endeavors, whatever they be. So we e-mailed Philip last night asking him for more information about National Coaching Fellows, and he got back to us within a few hours. He says that he’s looking for great interns to help him launch his non-profit, and we want to help him find some. If you have any hesitations about interning with National Coaching Fellows after reading the rest of this post, do your own employer research and see what you come up with. Then contact Philip at philip.kovoor@nationalcoachingfellows.org and see what he has to say.
Here’s an excerpt from the e-mail Philip sent us:
National Coaching Fellows is a startup nonprofit founded by a University of Chicago alumnus. Our mission is to recruit and train the nation’s most promising leaders to serve in high needs primary and secondary schools as athletic coaches committed to the academic achievement, personal development, and athletic success of student-athletes.
During the 2008-2009 academic year, we will run a pilot program with 10 corps members from the University of Chicago coaching at schools in the Englewood, Hyde Park, Kenwood, South Shore, Woodlawn, Washington Park neighborhoods. The following year we will recruit, train, and place 50 corps members across the City of Chicago before expanding to New York, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C.
Our corps members will leverage the existing relationship between coach and student-athlete providing an alternate primary influencer that will instill high expectations, build motivation, and support the academic and personal development of student-athletes. In pursuit of this dream, our corps members will surpass the traditional expectations of athletics coaches to provide grade and attendance accountability, health and wellness seminars, career and goal planning sessions, academic tutoring, team study sessions, standardized test preparation, financial planning seminars, and college and financial aid counseling. By pursuing the underlying issues of students in high-needs communities, we hope to enable educators to close the achievement gap.
Fulfilling our commitment to students, schools, and communities requires a staff of talented, compassionate, and relentless volunteers. Our summer interns will build the foundations of an organization that will impact the lives of student-athletes across the nation.
That sounds awesome to us! By the way, Philip says that they will have a website up in the next month at NationalCoachingFellows.org.
National Coaching Fellows is currently seeking 8 interns in the following areas: research, finance, fundraising, development, programming, operations, marketing, and technology. Since this is a startup non-profit, the interns will be taking on significant responsibility in building the foundation for the organization’s future successes. These internships probably aren’t for the faint of heart, because startups rarely are.
Philip is looking for interns who have completed at least one year of college; have excellent writing, interpersonal, and organizational skills; can work collaboratively and independently in an unorthodox setting; and have a minimum of a 3.0 cumulative GPA. If you fit that description and want to be a part of a new non-profit that is going to change the lives of students through athletics, then send a cover letter and resume to philip.kovoor@nationalcoachingfellows.org. Make sure that your cover letter answers these questions: (1) Why would you like to join a startup non-profit? (2) What can you contribute to National Coaching Fellows? (3) What position at National Coaching Fellows would be the best fit for you? The opportunity seems open ended, so if the specific internship fields that are offered don’t appeal to you, feel free to propose your own in the cover letter.
As you’d expect with a startup non-profit, the internships at National Coaching Fellows are unpaid. Philip’s e-mail to us said that the internships are located in Chicago; however, the original posting has the location listed as Warren, OH (but still says that the internships are in Chicago). You can intern full-time or part-time, and the hours are flexible. There are no links today, because this is the first publicly viewable online mention of National Coaching Fellows that we know about.
Good luck, Philip! We hope that National Coaching Fellows is a great success because of some great interns who found out about you here.
Tags: coaching, development, education, fellowship programs, finance, Illinois, information technology, Internships, marketing, non-profit, Ohio, operations, research, sports
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Sounds like a great idea! We could certainly use more coaches in the Southeast, given how many kids are excited about sports.
This program sounds amazing! I love the idea of a “start up” NGO. We all know that students are influenced just as much (if not more) by coaches as teachers. I wish National Coaching Fellows the best of luck!!!