From Firefighting to Sound Recording: The Wide Range of Funded Summer Internships

The prospective computer science and math double major, herself a native of Nepal, worked as an intern for a biotech company in Kathmandu as part of a biodiversity program run by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This involved collecting organic samples from people and animals, and from the ground.

“The aim of the project is to see if any zoonotic diseases are spilling over from wild to domestic animals, and then on to human beings,” said Mishra. “The results will be used to inform public health policy and prepare the government for any possible disease outbreak.”

She was among the many student grant recipientswho gathered in Smith Union in early September for a poster exhibition showcasing their summer internships. For the summer of 2023, the Office of Career Exploration and Development (CXD) distributed 165 grants, each worth $6,000-$7,000, enabling students to pursue an impressive variety of internship opportunities, both near and far.

Juniors Esteban Guzman and Sammi McLemore both spent time in the Boston area carrying out medical research. Guzman was at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s organic synthesis laboratory, a “really exciting” new experience for the biochemistry major, who is interested in cancer research as a possible career.

McLemore spent the summer in a neuroscience lab at Tufts, studying a particular type of microscopic roundworm known as C.elegans. “It has a more simplified nervous system than humans but is still comparable. So, by studying them we get a better understanding of glutamate receptors, which are important for synaptic development. This,” she said, “can help our understanding of conditions like autism, Alzheimers, and epilepsy.” The experience confirmed McLemore’s ambition to pursue a PhD after graduation.

Aspiring doctor Abby Flanagan ’25 stayed close to campus for her internship, getting to know the ropes at Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick. “It was a great chance to experience how a hospital works from the inside and give back to the local community. I really enjoyed it,” said Flanagan, who performed a range of tasks during her internship, including working on a project aimed at gauging how to make best use of hospital volunteers.

International student Bojana Drča ’24 traveled to Belgrade in her native Serbia to teach environmental education and sustainability to kindergarten and elementary schoolchildren. Working with a nonprofit called EcoHub, she helped to fill gaps in the Serbian curriculum, which does not really cover these topics, she said. “I worked with a really inspiring team of women, trying to make the study of nature interesting and fun,” explained Drča, who is majoring in government and economics with the goal of working in education policy reform.

“It’s so inspiring to hear from the students themselves how their summer internships transpired, what they learned, and how it will lead them forward along their own unique career journeys,” said CXD Senior Associate Director Meg Springer. “As I talked with the recipients,” she added, “the overall theme I heard was that ‘The CXD funded internship grants allow magic to happen!’”

Other summer internship highlights include:

• Studying aspects of wildland fire at the US Fire Service’s Fire Science Lab in Missoula, Montana.
• Working at the Boston Celtics basketball team and using analytics to help players, coaches, and scouts be more effective.
• Providing free medical care at a health care center on the Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma.
  
• Being a community health intern at a teaching hospital in Lagos, Nigeria.
• Working in a recording studio under a multi-award-winning Boston area music producer.
  
• Deciphering old handwriting and working with documents dating back to the seventeenth century with the Maine Historical Society.
• Traveling across the country as a software engineering intern, working on a data collection app for offshore wildlife surveyors.
• Helping to run an organic farm in Bowdoinham, just ten miles from campus.