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Yale Divinity School
409 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06515YDS Home>OSM
For Prospective Supervisors
An Invitation
YDS invites churches and other institutions to share in the theological education and formation of individuals for ministry. Sites participating in the internship program represent a broad range of denominations, theologies, and missions. They include parishes, campuses, and faith-based organizations. Students participating in the program are an equally diverse group. Each site has a trained supervisor who directs and supports the student’s experience and engages in theological reflection with the student. To become a supervised ministry site, you should be able to:
· provide significant tasks that a student can accomplish and learn from on a part-time and short-time basis;
· enable a student to function in roles appropriate to their status as students in formation;
· give a student an opportunity to work with people on serious issues;
· facilitate a student’s learning through conversation and reflection.
As educational programs of Yale University, all internships must be open to all students regardless of sex, race, age, disability, veteran status, or sexual orientation. I ask you to indicate your compliance with this policy in the Agreement you sign to have an intern (enclosed, point seven). I bring this to your attention because of the issue of sexual orientation in particular, knowing that it is an unsettled issue in some churches. I thank you for giving consideration to this before applying.
The student intern is expected to spend an average of 13.5 hours on site each week for two consecutive semesters, excluding most school breaks. This totals twenty-six weeks over the course of the academic year. The intern is expected to work under the guidance of a supervisor who is trained in supervision at Yale Divinity School (see below). Internships should be designed to teach students to reflect critically on the meaning and practice of ministry, and therefore include mandatory weekly one-hour sessions between student and supervisor. To complement their field learning, interns are also enrolled in a peer-reflection course taught by a practitioner at the Divinity School. (The Part-Time Internship is a course in the divinity school curriculum and should not be construed as a job. If what you want is to hire a YDS student, you should send a notice to our Dean of Students, Dale Peterson, at dale.peterson@yale.edu.)
How to Begin
The Part-time Internship Handbook provides comprehensive information about the field education program. It details how the program is organized; how the students', supervisors', and the Office of Supervised Ministries' contributions to the partnership that makes the supervised ministries program at Yale Divinity School a premier program in the world of theological education. If you would like to initiate the application process, you can request an information packet containing the necessary forms by e-mail or by calling our office at 203-432-5466.
Supervisor Qualifications
Supervisor Qualifications and Requirements: Committed and effective supervision is key to the success of supervised ministry. In order to maintain the integrity of the program, supervisors are expected to have certain qualifications and meet certain requirements, including:
· a minimum of three years of experience in a professional position that qualifies you to supervise students;
· at least one year in your current position;
· the ability to provide a structure that is challenging and educational, as well as the time to observe the intern’s practice of ministry and provide concrete feedback on it;
· meeting weekly with the student for supervision and theological reflection;
· participation in orientation and training in the skills of supervision. Times and dates for these sessions are announced each summer.
Last updated: 08/11/09