Come summertime, most Bowdoin students leave campus for other destinations. They travel near and far, from Boston to Beijing, to work, intern, or take classes, augmenting their academic studies with experiences in the world.
For the third year, Bowdoin’s Digital and Social Media team has created an interactive map to track students’ summer locations. Katherine Gracey ’16, the digital and social media intern, sent out an email earlier in the summer asking students — including incoming first-years — to submit information on where they are and what they are doing this summer.
The responses, after a slow start, flooded in. “Once students started to see what their friends were up to, we began to receive more and more submissions,” Gracey said, adding that she’s enjoyed hearing from friends and learning a bit about students she hasn’t met. “We hope the map will be used by professors, staff, alumni and prospective students to get a better grasp of the great things Bowdoin students are doing this summer.”
Below are a few examples of students’ summer jobs:
- Thomas Wiesner ’16 is in Sao Paulo, Brazil, working at a manufacturing company called Darnel. “I spend half of my time analyzing and evaluating production processes with the productivity team, and the other half analyzing financial data to make sure that product margins are accurate,” he writes.
- Reyada Atanasio ’17 is interning as a casework assistant for the International Rescue Committee in Boise, Idaho. “My responsibilities as a low income housing casework assistant is to coordinate and assist clients in the application process for affordable housing,” she writes.
- Jack Arnold ’18, after working at a pharmacology lab at Georgetown University, will travel to Cusco, Peru to help protect Andean bears.
- Rachel Kaye ’18 has a research job testing water for lead at a Louisiana public health center.
- Lyle Bleckel ’18 is working at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
- June Guo ’16 is designing and planting a demonstration kitchen garden at Comprehensive Rural Health Project in Maharashtra, India, which will include a medicinal garden, an aquaponics system, a green house and raised beds.
- Logan House ’17 is interning with the Scottish Parliament.
Students sending in submissions also include what they like most about their summer so far and what they miss most about Bowdoin. Gracey said the two most common replies to the latter question have been “food and friends.”
