Climate & Community Leaders Initiative

The CCL initiative seeks an engaged group of students who are passionate about leadership, advocacy, and community impact. While the selection process is competitive, it is also holistic, considering students from a variety of academic backgrounds and interests. The number of students selected each year may vary depending on program capacity and mentor/internship availability. Each class cohort selected in 2025 will be up to seven students.

At the core of the Climate & Community Leaders experience is a semester at Williams-Mystic. However, all WM students at Williams are still eligible to study away for up to two additional semesters. Most Williams students attend Williams Mystic in the sophomore year, allowing time in the junior year for further study off campus.

Yes, students in the Williams classes of 2027 and 2028 are eligible to apply for the Climate & Community Leaders Initiative this year. We welcome your application, whether you are a past, present or future WM student.

Yes! Many of the elements of the Global Scholars program are of interest to students considering the Climate & Community Leaders program, so we expect that there will be some overlap in the cohorts.

Your CCL application also serves as your Williams-Mystic application, so you only need to complete one application. As a CCL applicant, you’ll receive your decision by March 31.

In this first year, the Climate and Community Leaders Initiative is officially open only to Williams College students. However, we are eager to expand this opportunity to students from other colleges in the near future. If you are highly motivated and interested in participating, we encourage you to apply to the Williams-Mystic Program, which is a core part of CCL. We are open to working with exceptional students from other schools to explore how this initiative can be adapted beyond Williams.

Most of the CCL applicants will be undeclared, and some might not even have narrowed down the list of possible majors. The Climate and Community Leadership Initiative is designed to be interdisciplinary, supporting students from all academic backgrounds—including humanities, social sciences and arts—who are interested in leadership, advocacy and community impact.

Your CCL pathway will be personalized based on your academic and professional interests. Whether you are interested in languages, government, academia, law, science, finance, research or the arts, CCL helps you develop leadership skills and make connections that align with your future goals—even if they evolve over time.

Your candidacy as a medical school applicant may be strengthened by your experience as a CCL--both by demonstrating a commitment to health equity, as well as to having an understanding of the social and environmental determinants of health. 

Internship experiences for a pre-med student would be selected related to the experience needed, from research to clinical work. One student might choose a clinical study on asthma rates near industrial areas, for example. Other relevant internships could be researching climate-driven disease trends, such as Lyme disease, conducting lead poisoning screenings in low-income housing communities or developing public health strategies to protect vulnerable communities from heat-related illnesses. 

Working with your CCL faculty mentor, along with your pre-health advisor, you’ll find research, medical, public health or environmental health internships that will both align with the expectations of the medical school application process and provide valuable hands-on experience in health-related climate and environmental issues.

No, each selected student is expected to complete at least one summer internship as part of their CCL pathway, but the support and mentorship is there for a second summer as well. All CCL students have the option to seek a different internship for their second summer or a different experience altogether. 

Regardless of your major, CCL helps you build leadership, advocacy and research skills that can be applied across industries. The program is intended to  support your academic and professional goals, whether you're interested in the arts, public service, non-profit work, law, research or business, while also allowing you to explore the intersection of climate and community in meaningful ways. Contact us to help you brainstorm about your specific academic interests!

Not at all. The CCL pathway is about building  leadership and advocacy skills, regardless of your major and academic interests. So if today you’re thinking about data analysis and next year your focus is on global economics, your internship selections will evolve.

STEM students can find meaningful opportunities through internships in environmental justice analytics work (air and water quality), sustainable engineering, public health and medical research and data analytics for climate solutions, to name a few.