Paid positions are usually available at the Dare Institute for students with Work-Study eligibility. To apply for a position, mail, fax, or e-mail Michael L. Commons with your résumé and a cover letter.

No particular academic background is required to work at the Dare Institute, but interest in psychology is important. Past students have come from such diverse concentrations as biology, computer science, social studies, applied mathematics, economics, physics, languages, and, of course, psychology. Most undergraduates attend Harvard University, although other colleges have been represented at the Dare Institute as well. Graduate students are often masters or doctoral candidates at Harvard Graduate School of Education or Harvard Divinity School. A small number of graduate students have come from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and other universities. Increasingly, postgraduates with an Ed.D., M.Div., Ph.D., or M.D. have been involved with a variety of research at the Dare Institute.

Work at the Dare Institute can be divided into three main types of tasks:

  1. Research. Students join—and sometimes initiate—research projects in topics that interest them. Research takes a number of forms, from working with people in laboratory-based experiments to visiting schools and administering cognitive problems to children.
  2. Computing. The Institute has a local network of computers on which students perform tasks ranging from data entry to advanced statistical analysis and programming. The individual computers and the network require frequent maintenance and upgrading.
  3. Writing and Editing. Students write papers based on their research and data analysis. They also edit papers and presentations written by the Institute's officers.

Students may participate in one or more types of tasks, depending on their individual interests and skills. Each year one to four students present papers at psychological conventions such as Eastern Psychological, Western Psychological, and American Psychological Association, Association for Moral Education, Association for Behavior Analysis, Jean Piaget Society, Society for Quantitative Analysis of Behavior, Society for Research in Adult Development, Society for Research in Child Development, and International Society for Political Psychology. Several students, including undergraduates, have also published papers on the work they have done at the Dare Institute.

For more information on the types of research projects conducted at the Dare Institute, a list of current activities is available.