Vermont Research Open Source Program Office
ORCA (Open Research Community Accelerator) student internship program connects University of Vermont students with faculty, graduate researchers, and community partners to build open source tools with real-world impact.
About ORCA
The Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA) is a student initiative housed within UVM's Vermont Research Open Source Program Office (VERSO). We bridge the gap between academic research and real-world impact through open projects with social significance.
Student teams — called Pods — partner with faculty, graduate students, and community organizations to translate research findings into publicly accessible, open source tools. Members gain hands-on experience with industry-standard engineering practices while creating products that matter.
How It Works
ORCA teams operate like real open source engineering teams — with structured sprints, transparent collaboration, and a focus on shipping software that solves real problems.
You join a team of 4–5 students — including a Team Lead, members, and optional Business or Community Leads — to tackle a specific research challenge alongside a faculty sponsor.
Using Agile-inspired two-week sprints, you plan tasks collaboratively, hold brief stand-ups, and iterate openly. Every decision is transparent to the whole team and sponsor.
At the end of each sprint, teams record demonstrations of completed work for sponsors. Rather than traditional grades, you're evaluated on stakeholder feedback and personal growth goals you set yourself.
Everything you build is publicly released under open source licenses. Your work lives on GitHub, cited in research, and used by communities — long after the semester ends.
Projects
Open source tools created by ORCA Pods — each addressing a real challenge identified by researchers, community partners, or state agencies.
A statewide zoning visualization covering all 237 Vermont towns — making complex zoning regulations accessible to planners, advocates, and the public to identify barriers to affordable housing and climate resilience.
A comprehensive town-level dataset of Vermont wastewater resources, supporting housing development and economic sustainability by identifying infrastructure gaps aligned with the Vermont Climate Action Plan.
An AI-powered tool for exploring and classifying silences and conversational gaps using Random Forests, CNNs, Whisper transcriptions, and BERT models — in partnership with the Vermont Conversation Lab.
An open source tool for Interpretive Structural Modeling that creates flow diagrams helping groups solve collective problems — applied in research on thriving in open source communities.
An open source toolkit helping students and researchers get started with open source software development — covering licensing, version control, community governance, and documentation.
A static web map for emergency water and wastewater resources across Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York — supporting mutual aid coordination during infrastructure crises.
An exploratory data visualization combining zoning, wastewater, and flood-risk datasets to help policymakers, planners, and community members understand the factors shaping Vermont's livability and sustainable growth.
A community-driven continuation of NASA's Transform-to-Open-Science curriculum, rewritten and expanded by VERSO. Five modules equip researchers, students, and citizen scientists with open science knowledge and data management skills.
A story-driven, collaborative open source game where players don't just explore a world — they co-create it. Players recover knowledge, craft stories, and design characters and quests drawn from their own lives and communities.
A modern, secure system replacing VRWA's legacy Access database — automating course registration syncing, operator portal access for training records and certificates, and administrative tools for attendance tracking and regulatory compliance.
A civic technology project providing real-time alerts and notifications for Burlington, Vermont — connecting residents with timely local information to support community awareness and safety.
How We Work
Exceeding sponsor expectations generates referrals, trust, and lasting program growth. Good enough isn't the goal.
Validating ideas with teammates before diving in prevents misunderstanding and saves time. Share rough drafts, not polished products.
Changes happen transparently. Everyone on the team and every stakeholder knows what's changing and why — no surprises.
Collaborative problem-solving elevates everyone. Approach challenges with questions, not conclusions.
Teaching others to solve problems builds a more resilient team and a more impactful program than going it alone.
Life in a Pod
ORCA isn't a class with readings and exams. It's a real internship — with real deadlines, real stakeholders, and real software shipped publicly. Here's what a typical semester looks like from the inside.
You'll join a Pod of 4–5 students — a tight team with a mix of skills — working on a specific project for a faculty member, community organization, or state agency. Pods operate like small, self-directed startup teams: you make decisions together, divide up work based on strengths, and hold each other accountable. Unlike a traditional class project, the people using your output are real, and they're counting on you.
Multiple Pods run simultaneously across ORCA each semester, each on different projects. Teams share a co-working space, cross-pollinate ideas, and support each other — so you're never siloed, even if your Sprint work is focused.
ORCA uses an Agile-inspired sprint model. Every two weeks your team plans a sprint: you look at the backlog, talk through priorities with your sponsor, and each member commits to a concrete set of tasks. Brief daily or weekly stand-ups keep everyone aligned and surface blockers early. At the end of each sprint you record a short demo showing what you actually shipped — not slides, not a status update, but working software or data.
This rhythm teaches you to scope work realistically, communicate progress continuously, and ship incrementally rather than in one big push at the end of the semester.
Your project sponsor — a researcher, planner, nonprofit, or state agency — isn't a passive client. They attend Sprint Reviews, give direct feedback on your demos, and help you understand the real-world constraints your tool has to work within. You'll practice translating technical choices into plain language, managing expectations, and presenting work to people who care deeply about the outcome without caring much about the code.
This stakeholder dynamic is one of the most valuable parts of the experience. Learning to build software with someone, not just for them, is a skill most engineers don't develop until years into their careers.
ORCA projects are built for people — not for benchmarks or portfolios. That means you start by understanding who will use the tool and what problem they're actually trying to solve, then prototype quickly, test with real users, and iterate. UX Design Specialists lead wire-framing and usability testing; developers build to those specs; data specialists shape what the interface shows and why. Everyone participates in understanding the user.
The goal isn't perfection on the first try — it's learning what works, fast, so you can make it better. You'll ship things you're proud of and things you'd do differently. Both are part of the training.
Plan, build, demo, reflect — then repeat. The sprint cycle keeps work tangible and momentum high.
Short check-ins surface blockers before they become problems. Everyone knows what everyone else is working on.
Stakeholders attend Sprint Reviews and give direct feedback — building your ability to communicate work to non-technical audiences.
Issues, pull requests, code review, and project boards — the same tools used in professional open source development.
UX-first thinking means you design before you build, test before you ship, and validate assumptions early.
You set your own growth goals at the semester's start and assess your progress at the end — with stakeholder feedback as a guide.
Internship Roles
ORCA offers five distinct internship positions. All roles require current UVM student status and a willingness to apply technology to real research and community problems.
Guides a small intern team while contributing directly to open source development. Coordinates with project sponsors on goals and progress, researches relevant technologies, and provides technical mentorship throughout the semester.
Writes clean, well-documented code and contributes new features within an Agile team. Works through Git and pull requests, maintains documentation, participates in sprint planning and reviews, and debugs and optimizes shared codebases.
Creates and analyzes location-based datasets for research and community projects. Works with ArcGIS, QGIS, and Python geospatial libraries to build maps, generate metadata, and document workflows for partners and the public.
Analyzes large datasets, identifies trends, and builds visualizations and interactive dashboards that make findings accessible to stakeholders. Documents methodologies, supports cross-functional problem-solving, and ensures data quality throughout the project lifecycle.
Leads user research, gathers requirements through stakeholder meetings, and designs wireframes, prototypes, and mockups from low to high fidelity. Conducts usability testing, creates design systems and style guides, and ensures accessibility standards are met throughout the build.
Current Pods
Each Pod is named after a Vermont ski mountain. Four teams are currently running in parallel, each focused on a distinct problem domain.
Join ORCA
ORCA accepts UVM undergraduate students each semester. Members can participate for course credit, as paid student employees, or as volunteers. No specific major is required — we welcome engineers, designers, communicators, and researchers.
Recruitment typically opens at the start of each semester. Check the VERSO website or reach out through the program office to learn about current openings.
Learn about ORCA's mission, current projects, and how to apply.
verso.w3.uvm.edu/orca →Read about our policies, onboarding process, and what to expect.
View on GitHub Wiki →Browse all VERSO-UVM open source projects and contribute.
github.com/VERSO-UVM →