This summer, three Bowdoin students are contributing to the common good by analyzing the consequences of US trade policy, sharing the stories of soldiers whose sacrifices shaped the nation, and preparing for a career protecting lives on the water.
Their internships are among more than 200 supported this summer through Bowdoin's Career Exploration and Development (CXD) office. Each year, CXD provides “funded internship” grants to allow students to pursue unpaid or low-paying opportunities across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.
Daniel Lee ’27, Decoding Trade Policy
The rising senior is assisting an MIT researcher designing algorithms to answer a question that has huge economic and political consequences: What do companies do when governments impose tariffs?
Working with political scientist In Song Kim, Lee is helping analyze how firms responded to two US policies enacted in 2018 that placed levies on imported steel and aluminum and on Chinese goods.
Lee is training the algorithm to read and classify tens of thousands of company filings, including exclusion requests that firms filed to avoid paying the fees and responding objections filed by their domestic competitors. To accomplish this, Lee’s been closely reading technical—and often imperfect—documents.
“A lot of my day-to-day is coding messy, inconsistent documents into structured data that those methods can eventually run on,” he said.
The overarching goal is to find out whether firms are offshoring, reorganizing global supply chains, or seeking exclusions to continue preexisting import precedents, Lee explained. “Observing how major trade policies affect companies and their supply chains is invaluable to policymakers, business owners, and other trade researchers,” he added.
In the second half of the summer, he’s also been investigating what firms do once they’re granted or denied an exemption—sourcing products elsewhere, moving to suppliers outside China, or investing in new production. “I'll also be looking at how these companies' lobbying activity changed before and after the decision,” he added.
Lee’s interest in this area was sparked by classes with Assistant Professor of Government and Legal Studies Soohyun Cho, which gave him insight into the interplay of politics and economics across the globe and reinforced his interest in law school. He is a government major and history minor.
The internship, combined with his Bowdoin education, has sharpened his research skills, he said. “So much of legal work comes down to reading dense material carefully, deciding what actually counts as evidence, and building an argument from it. Even if I don't end up in trade law specifically, the combination of rigorous reading and quantitative analysis feels like a great skill for whichever career path I pursue.”
“I think it's safe to say that Bowdoin's liberal arts education and spending time in both quantitative and qualitative classes gave me the versatility this kind of research demands.”
—Daniel Lee ’27
Grace Campbell ’27, Preserving and Interpreting History
Long before she arrived at Gettysburg National Military Park this summer, the rising senior was telling the stories about the Civil War battle to audiences at Bowdoin and elsewhere.
This past semester, she helped create an exhibit about Joshua Chamberlain in Hawthorne-Longfellow Library with the Bowdoin Preservation Collective, a club she cofounded and leads.
As a high school student in Boothbay, Maine, she put together an exhibit about soldiers from her hometown who fought at Gettysburg, including her ancestor Lorenzo Webster of the 19th Maine Infantry Regiment.
"Gettysburg has always been a passion of mine," Campbell said, especially the stories of "the little guys"—the ordinary soldiers history often forgets. “I have wanted to do this internship for a while and was so excited that I could do it this summer with the help of CXD.”
So far this summer, Campbell—a history and Classics major—has used her knowledge and drive to create a forty-five-minute tour in the National Cemetery highlighting the Maine soldiers buried there. This includes nineteen-year-old Sgt. William S. Jordan from Bangor who fought with Chamberlain’s 20th Maine at the Battle of Gettysburg.
“While I love Chamberlain, especially as a Bowdoin student and Mainer, I think it’s also important to remember the men who served under him,” she said. “When Colonel Strong Vincent put Chamberlain on Little Round Top on July 2, 1863, and told him to ‘hold at all costs,’ the costs were Maine men like Sgt. Jordan.”
In her tour, she also tells the story of the 16th Maine, a regiment that suffered 80 percent casualties. The ones who lived were forced to stay behind to save time for their retreating comrades. Before they were captured, they tore up their flags and broke flag poles to prevent the Confederates from claiming them as trophies. “It’s truly an inspiring story,” Campbell said.
Campbell’s goal after Bowdoin is to work in cultural heritage, museum curatorship, or historical interpretation. “This internship allows me to do this while getting outside, getting on the ground, and doing important work. I love also the hands-on teaching I can facilitate,” she said. “It really has been a life-changing experience and I’m eternally grateful for the support from the Bowdoin community.”
“My internship has solidified my understanding and drive to work in a cultural heritage role in the future. It’s also re-ignited my spark for teaching and learning in this specialized and unique way.”
—Grace Campbell ’27
JP Felmlee ’27, Supporting Maritime Safety
This summer, the rising senior is getting an inside look at life in one of the Coast Guard's busiest and most demanding operational environments: Station South Padre Island in Texas, near the US–Mexico border.
His internship is part of the Coast Guard Auxiliary University Program, an ROTC-style program that prepares college students for leadership in the Coast Guard and other maritime services. Felmlee has been a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary—the civilian volunteer component of the US Coast Guard—since 2023.
Felmlee, whose long-term plan is to be an intelligence officer with the Coast Guard or Navy, said he saw the internship as an important step toward that goal.
“I chose to intern at Station South Padre Island because of its proximity to the US–Mexico border and its diverse mission set,” he said. As a small boat station, it conducts law enforcement and search-and-rescue operations while bolstering border security by countering drug smuggling, illegal fishing, and human trafficking. “This experience will provide firsthand operational knowledge that will make me a more effective intelligence officer by grounding future intelligence work in a practical understanding of maritime operations,” he said.
The experience has given him a greater appreciation for the personal skills and teamwork behind every rescue and law enforcement operation.
“I am learning first-hand the discipline, professionalism, and aptitude required to save lives,” he said. “In other words, the work required in saving lives at the Coast Guard is truly a station-wide effort with a variety of operational and supporting roles—from boarding personnel to intelligence analysts.”
A government and history major and Classical studies minor, Felmlee credits Bowdoin's demanding classes—and the long hours of studying and attention to detail they require—with preparing him for the experience and to qualify for certifications.
“Everyone holds each other to a very high standard, with attention to detail being of paramount importance,” he said. “The process of learning and qualifying is intense, but Bowdoin has prepared me well for this challenge.”
“Learning about operations is a fundamental necessity for effective intelligence analysis in the maritime service branches, and the opportunity to learn about some of the most high-stakes operations the Coast Guard conducts on a daily basis will help prepare me for a career in support of such operations.”
—JP Felmlee ’27
