As part of the NCW curriculum, students are required to complete a 120 hour internship, providing them with supervised observation and field experience in community health settings conducted by government, voluntary, professional or industrial/ corporate organizations. Through the NCW program, the CSUF Center for Internships and Community Engagement (CICE) specifically identifies and places students in organizations that address childhood obesity and nutrition for diverse populations.

Below are some internship experiences from the Spring 2013 semester.

"I am interning for the City of La Habra Child Development. This week I was taught how to process claims for our food program. Each provider sends us a claim at the end of the month with a menu for each day of the week. The menu shows us how many times they fed the children in their centers and if the food that they are giving to the children is approved by our food program which follows state guidelines. If their menu is up to date and the food they served followed proper servings of fruit, vegetable, proteins, and all that, they then get reimbursed for that month.

This pertains to nutrition because it helps me use everything that I learned in the nutrition classes of what is healthy and what is not health and how many servings of each goes into a meal. By reimbursing the providers for each month they are encouraged to continue feeding these children healthier food and this will help lower rates of children overweight and obese."

"I am currently doing my internship at a non-profit organization called Grandma's House of Hope. It is an organization that works with women that are in shelters, children living in motels, and food distribution to needy families. This is my first update on Facebook and in this update I want to talk about a specific day in my internship. On the first day of my internship I helped pack 70 bags of food for children living in motels in Anaheim. The bags were filled with foods such as protein, cereal, snacks, cans of veggies and fruit, cup of noodle soups, and peanut butter. These bags help to provide the kids with food for the weekend (Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday). SInce the kids main meal during the week is at school many of them go hungry when they are away from school such as weekends. So Grandma's House of Hope helps to provide the kids with food. They are distributed to them directly at the motels every other Thursday. So, I helped put together those bags."

I'm interning at Orange County Department of Ed. On Thursday we were at an event working with the Anaheim Ducks to promote healthy breakfast. We had a workshop where we would rotate students every 7 min. We would teach them what a balance breakfast is and how it provides potential energy throughout the day. We demonstrated with an aqua pod by pumping air into the bottle and having it blast off. This gave the students a visual that when they eat a balanced breakfast, it will give them the potential energy to blast off their day!

I am learning so much from my internship! I am learning how non-profit organizations work and the duties of a health manager. The toddlers are also amazing! I am looking forward to share with you all of my experiences."

Hi everyone! I currently intern at Easter Seals Senior Day Services located in Brea. The seniors here get physical exercise at least three times a week. When I come in on Mondays and Fridays, I get to exercise with them (each session typically runs for about an hour). They get very motivated with the staff and the interns joining them, not to mention the upbeat music that gets them going! In addition to joining them in their exercises, I also help pass out things like weights and pom-poms. It is great that this facility encourages physical activity. Even the physically disabled seniors still benefit from it.

I am happy to say that the Open House that we had at Horizon Pregnancy Clinic this past Saturday, March 16th, went well and we had a good turn out. Many families and individuals came to the clinic to see the location and what is offered there. We also made a few new connections during that time which will help with fundraising efforts. I am now working on preparing for the annual banquet we have coming up in April by contacting many local businesses and sending out letters. I also continually update the resource list for the organization and make sure the women we help get what they need. We have had more women come in lately for our services, so it has been nice to see that more people are recognizing this small organization. We had 2 women come in today for pregnancy testing and ultrasounds after the pregnancy was confirmed, along with a woman and her boyfriend who came in today for our Earn While You Learn class, that teaches about child care and health. Today we also sent out a few hundred banquet invites to those who have supported the organization before along with other new connections. It was a very busy day, but it all went well.

"As a student for this cohort study I found an internship at the Boys and Girls Club of Garden Grove. I had a lot of internship opportunities to choose from but this one seemed to be the best suiting for me and it was. I am working with children from ages 7-11 years old. They are some of the most unique and talented children I have ever met. They have a passion for learning and are willing to learn everything I teach them when it comes to proper nutrition and adequate amounts of physical fitness per day. The Boys and Girls Club of Garden Grove thrive on children eating healthy and be physically fit, which is something I love about this experience. Every day that I go to work I get to plan the children's activities for an hour. For the first portion of my internship I choose to teach the kids how to eat properly and healthy. We have focused on how to enjoy eating fruits and vegetables without being discouraged to eat them. I have taught the children that fruits and vegetables can be fun and so far they love it. This is only the beginning but so far so great."

My internship has been very rewarding and I would like to tell you about an event I participated in. I participated in the Health Fair for Fullerton College where I helped set up, was in charge of the iHEART, and helped tear down everything at the end of the day. I was able to inform students about the many benefits Health Services has as well as what their health fee includes. It is amazing to see how many people did not know where Health Services was or that they can get many services for free. I also answered questions regarding nutrition plus the differences between cigarettes, hookah, and electronic cigarettes.

Hello! My name is Chayanin. I am interning at St. Jude Heritage Health Education. The department focuses mainly on weight management and diabetes education. They offer a weight management program called HMR (Health Management Resources), which is a very structured weight loss program. Most patients in the program are medically supervised due to the very low calories meal plans. The bottom picture shows the table we set up to promote the HMR program at the health fair held by St. Jude Hospital.

I am currently working on two research projects for AHOC. Both have to deal with schools in cities in Orange County. For one of the projects, we are to look up information on current physical activity-related and nutrition-related programs the schools have going on for the children and/or their family. The second project is about schools that are currently on Safe Routes to School National Partnership and have current routes being modified. We are also to call the engineers in those cities to ask the reason for the modification of those routes.

Five students from the Nutrition for a Changing World program recently participated in a mini-exchange program at UC Davis to learn about nutrition-related graduate programs and career pathways. Participants toured the UC Davis campus and laboratory facilities, met and interacted with faculty and other graduate students, attended a seminar, learned about student research opportunities and more.

Below are testimonials from Cal State Fullerton students who participated in the mini-exchange program.

Joshua Attwood, Undergraduate, Kinesiology Major

Jessica Miller, Undergraduate, Finance Major

Nancy Vargas, MPH student

Vattana Peong, MPH student

Kristina Beasley, Undergraduate, Health Science Major