APPLIED PROJECT

Applied Project Proposal

· Description of the City

I did an internship as part of my course studies at the Municipality of Al Ain City. Al Ain is considered as a part of the capital city Abu Dhabi. However, Al Ain City is known as one of the calmest cities in the country. It has a high percentage of UAE citizens comparted to other cities in the UAE. This city is established to have the largest number of houses for families; owing a huge mansion or house is something usual in Al Ain. Al Ain City is a city where most of the royal family members had born. For instance, HH Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of the UAE, was born in Al Ain. The government strategies for Al Ain city are to make the city calm not busy such as other well-known cities like Abu Dhabi and Dubai. During the era of Sheikh Zayed, he established the rule of no high floor buildings should be in Al Ain to prevent crowd. Al Ain has the largest valley and oasis in the country. Agriculture in this city is attractive and the Municipality department members are really working hard to retain this feature in the city.

· Description of the Internship Program

I was under the Strategic Research and Studies Department. The Strategic Research and Studies Department at the Municipality of Al Ain City is a well-known department in terms retaining useful archives and research that discusses a variety of topics related to society and how to develop services that serve the society. During our first meeting, we discussed about various topics to build my internship report. Saif Alhallami, the supervisor, gave me chance to choose my topic that are related to the courses that I am taking throughout the semester. This helped me to apply the courses to my internship program. Since the internship program that I have attended is in the Strategic Research and Studies Department, topics are mainly common from what I am taking in my Integrative Social Science program. All topics shared different social issues and needs critical thinking in order to overcome a certain social issue. In my topic, for example, the department and I had agreed about discussing income inequality in different nations and how to overcome this issue. Since we discussed this topic in my ISS 514 class, I am really interested in discussing it during my internship program. In addition, how the UAE has no income inequality? And how different nations would do to get rid of this social issue. The internship program team and I reached to an idea that shows how the UAE has no income inequality and mentioned the main reasons behind that success, which help other societies and nations to be positively influenced by these principles that the UAE have to overcome income inequality. The internship involved various tasks that I was assigned under the department. For instance, I collected various resources for composing a report. After which we had a departmental meeting to ascertain the credibility of the resources. The head of the department looked into the various resources together with his team members and established the effectiveness of the resources. We also talked about the most recent principles of the 50th anniversary that stablish effective lives for the community. For instance, I researched about income inequality and wealth disparities and how one could prevent income inequality.

I established a PowerPoint presentation concerning the final research to ascertain the availability of all the needed materials. I also met the departmental team to discuss about the first draft during the time the Expo was taking place in the UAE. We discussed how Expo would be a positive event in the country because of job increase. I also helped ascertain how the UAE was changing with the first 50 years of its anniversary. I got all the work directions from Mahrah Aldarmaki. Saif Alhallami supervised all the work I did to ensure I did the right thing. I also compose and submitted the final report including all the current progress of the UAE from the time I submitted the draft report to the time it got approved. After the approval of the report, I met with the departmental team to discuss the credibility and effectiveness of the resources used in compiling the report as all the resources were from official websites. Comment by Jesse Chanley: You create the PowerPoint to present what you have learned from your sources. It isn’t to determine the availability of sources. Comment by Jesse Chanley: What are “official” websites? Do you mean credible?

· Internship Program Site: Municipality of Al Ain City

· Department: Strategic Research and Studies Department

· Supervisor: Saif Alhallami

· Research Department Team Member: Mahrah Aldarmaki

· Research Topic: Income Inequality

· Website: www.dmt.gov.ae

Class #1: ISS 501

· The class helped me gain effective life skills necessary for the internship which included critical thinking, time management, and assertiveness.

· It also helped me gain exposure which helped me work effectively during my internship since I developed effective communication skills that boosted my self-confidence.

Class#2: ISS 512

· In this class, I learned various interactions between ethics and social sciences which helped me apply ethics during my internship about how my research was done.

· I also learned various theories and understood how ethics are essential to social science hence helping me develop effective relationships with others during my internship.

Class#3: ISS 514

· This class helped me understand how to select resources effectively hence I could find various sources for the internship materials without facing challenges.

· I also learned how to conduct presentations which helped me during the internship PowerPoint presentation.

Class#4: ISS 518

· I learned how to differentiate the social and non-social norms of science and technology hence during the internship I could separate these factors effectively when researching inequality.

· I also understood the difference between science and technology which helped me establish how to elaborate on various factors impacting wealth inequality in the United States during the internship.