Scribus is included in this year’s Google Summer of Code and now looking for contributions in the form of proposals and feedback to already formulated ideas: http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/GsoC_2008_Ideas
Scribus is also actively looking for student applications:
http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/GsoC_2008_Example_proposal

From the Gnome Usability list:
“Season of Usability is a series of mentored student projects to encourage students of usability, user-interface design, and interaction design to get involved with Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS) projects. It offers an excellent way to gain experience in the interdisciplinary and collaborative development of user interface
solutions in international software projects.”
http://season.openusability.org/index.php/projects