Our practicum placements have taken place in over 50 countries, partnering with over 80 country programs. Explore the interactive map below and see all our practicum partnerships.

Real World Experience

  • Put classroom knowledge into practice in a community in need.
  • Work within a government or non-government organization, a consulting firm or in the private sector. The Mortenson Center has cultivated relationsips with a breadth of organizations. (See some of our partners above and below.)
  • The typical practicum placement is two to three months over the summer after your first academic year.
  • You are matched with a practicum agency according to your topic of interest including water, sanitation, public health, humanitarian, biomedical, structural, research-focused and more.
  • Most placements are international.
  • Practicums are funded, in part, by the Mortenson Center.

Thank You to all of our Practicum Host Agencies:

image collage of host agencies
image collage of host agencies
image collage of host agencies
image collage of host agencies
image collage of host agencies
image collage of host agencies

Student Practicum Experiences

Eight men sitting cross legged on the ground and on a bench with white logo tshirts
Ryan Gomez with his Movement on the Ground team
Desi Beardmoore stands atop a recently completed pedestrian bridge
Desi Beardmoore helped design this Bridges to Prosperity project in Kama, Uganda
Man with shoulder length brown hair working in rural Sierra Leone
Grady Colgan in Sierra Leone with OneVillage Partners
Woman standing at a table with T-shirts behind her a literature for Soft Landing non-profit on the table
Zeenath Khan working with the refugee resettlement nonprofit Soft Landing
Collage of woman with short brown hair working on bridge construction sites
Briana Clark in Bolivia with Engineers in Action
Woman looking over the border wall into Mexico
Jen Morin worked at the Texas border with Solidarity Engineering on WASH projects in shelters in Mexico
Collage of bald man with sunglasses working with refugees in Greece
Tim Zoellick in Greece with Movement on the Ground
Katie Chambers standing in a field with cut bamboo.
Katie Chambers on a field visit to examine sanitation system resilience in resource-limited settings
Collage of woman with long red hair working in rural Alaska
Annalynne Doll in rural Alaska with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium
Casie Venable taking housing measurements with local community members.
Casie Venable looks at how post-disaster, reconstructed shelters will perform in a future hazardous events
Photo collage of woman with brown hair, pulled back, in Morocco
Hailey Ferrel in Morocco with Dar Si Hmad