Funding Unpaid and Underpaid Internships Through Cross-Campus Collaboration (feat. Matt Cowley)

In this episode, Dr. Matt Cowley of Virginia Tech shares how his team united career services, financial aid, procurement, legal, payroll, advancement, and employers to build a creative, compliant solution for funding unpaid and underpaid internships. Matt discusses how simple leadership moves—framing the problem around student impact, asking the right people to the table, and staying open to iteration—turned a complex challenge into a scalable system that gets real dollars into students’ hands.Key Takeaways:Solving unpaid internships required cross-campus collaboration, not just career services leadership.Matt brought together typically siloed teams by clearly articulating the student problem and inviting partners to co-create the solution.The final model routes support funds through employers, allowing students to be paid while staying aligned with institutional and financial aid policies.Data helped define the scope of the issue, but student stories drove urgency and buy-in.Early success shows that building the system matters as much as securing the funding—and that iteration is part of the process.Resources:Matt’s LinkedIn profileMatt’s email: [email protected] Tech’s virtual career center (powered by uConnect) Continue the conversation in the Career Everywhere Community! Join 2,000 other higher ed career services leaders today: careereverywhere.com/community