A new fund started in 2006 in honor of Louis Brandeis' 150th birthday will provide a $3,500 stipend for 10 students interning in unpaid social justice positions this summer, the Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences announced recently.The anonymous alumnus responsible for the new Louis D. Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice has slated $35,000 just for this summer for rising sophomores, juniors and seniors participating in internships for and not for credit, said Jessica Paquin, the Office's Academic Internship Administrator.

In total, he has contributed over $500,000 to the fund, said Raquel Rosenblatt, director of donor relations.

"The purpose of the fund is to advance the social justice efforts of our University's namesake,"she wrote in an e-mail to the Justice Tuesday.

Stipend applications, available on the University Web site, are due Feb. 11. A small panel of faculty and staff will choose recipients by March 7, Paquin said. She declined to name the selection committee's members.

With 60 to 70 percent of Brandeis students participating in unpaid internships each year, helping students explore internships and offering stipends has been a long-time goal of administrators and alumni, she said.

"Funding for internships and experiential learning has been on the administration's radar for quite some time," Paquin said. "More and more students are doing internships now, so of course the University has to recognize that and of course encourage that."

Brandeis is providing two other new summer stipend opportunities for internships in social justice, civic leadership and other fields through the Hiatt Career Center, which offers $3,500 for an internship in career exploration and the Eli Segal Citizen Leadership Fellowship, which ALSO offers students $3,500 each.

The new funding available has come about through long-term planning and recent funding initiatives.

"It just happened to come up and coincide with other stipends that have come to fruition at the same time," Paquin said.

Recipients of the stipend through the social justice fund will receive $3,000 in April to cover such expenses as housing and airfare and will receive $500 when they return in September to cover reimbursements and any other smaller expenses.

The alumnus hopes the internships will include work in social justice, democracy and advocacy, for example, Paquin said, and "make the connection with the classroom and the larger picture."

According to a press release, examples of host agencies include "those that address issues of labor law, child and family policy, housing rights, health care advocacy, the elderly, environmental justice, educational access [and] discrimination."

So far, the new fund has supported activities of the Justice Brandeis Jubilee, the creation and dissemination of a Justice Brandeis scrapbook about his life, and the production of the PBS documentary on the life of Justice Brandeis. In the future, it will support the writing and production of a biography on Justice Brandeis, Rosenblatt wrote.