summer internship – Page 3

Governor’s Internship at the Commission of Asian American Affairs

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the Career Services Summer Funding grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending the summer. You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Naimah Hares, COL ’16

This summer I received the rare opportunity to intern under Tiffany Lawson, the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Advisory Commission of Asian American Affairs. After spending a few months reaching out to Mrs. Lawson and telling her about my background as a Penn student interested in studying law, we agreed to design an internship that would help enrich my learning experience about the state government.

Recently Governor Tom Wolf was elected, and his three main goals for his term are “Government that Works, Schools that Teach, and Jobs that Pay”. Along with these missions, the Commission functions as an advocacy group for all Asian communities in the state of Pennsylvania. In order to assist with this function, I began to create an updated service directory of all organizations that assisted Asian communities as a resource to the public. The project in itself was intriguing as I learned a lot about grassroots organizations that I did not even know; they provided helpful tools such as classes to learn English and assistance for refugees. Growing up in an immigrant family, I was again reminded of the hardships that many foreigners faced when moving to the United States, and I was grateful that these organizations assisted many members of Asian communities adjust to the American Culture.

When I was not working on the directory, I shadowed Mrs. Lawson as she attended numerous meetings and events. I was amazed at how busy one person could be, as she drove from Harrisburg to Philadelphia twice a week (I interned only in Philadelphia) and attended back-to-back meetings. As I quietly observed Mrs. Lawsons interactions with leaders of communities, businesses, and government staff, I learned a lot about the content of the meetings in terms of rising issues in certain communities and why foreign businesses would be interested in investing in parts of Philadelphia. But the most important skills I learned were about simple communication.

Before, I never had experience with networking and talking to people I knew nothing about, but Mrs. Lawson made an art out of it. Always with a big smile on her face, I was astonished at how much energy she had not only in greeting people, but also remembering very specific details about every person and making a conversation out of it. She coached me in being able to talk to other people and not feeling intimidated, and event took me to networking events to practice meeting people and following up with them. But now I feel very comfortable walking up to someone I have never met, having a casual conversation, and remembering that person later.

Thanks to the summer granted through Career Services, I have gathered a priceless experience in a number of areas. Without Mrs. Lawson, I would have never learned that there were amazing communities that existed such as the Bhutanese population in South Philadelphia, and the amount of effort each cultural community organization has put into investing in their community and helping especially immigrants to achieve a better standard of living. Having grown up in an immigrant community myself in West Philadelphia, I truly appreciate the existence of these community associations and organizations and think that their work goes a long way in helping immigrants and their children born in the United States achieve social mobility. In addition, my internship has also made known to me various social issues that I never considered. For example, in 2010 there was an issue regarding deportation among the Cambodian community in Philadelphia, which has influenced a national grassroots organization known as the 1Love Movement to form to assist communities in gaining autonomy.

My most recent and memorable experience at the internship has been attending my first fundraising event in Chinatown. Held at Ocean City Restaurant, the event was held for the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, one of the most impressive Asian American Film festivals held on the East Coast. It was an amazing event that raised awareness of the films that would be screened for the festival. I was lucky enough to meet City Councilman and Minority Whip David Oh, as well as a number of important leaders, and saw Mrs. Lawson deliver Governor Wolf’s greeting for the fundraising event. Impressed by the organization of the event (as well as having delicious Chinese food and trying jellyfish for the first time), the most important thing I gathered from the event was how most of the important figures I had met from various events in one room. It showed me the connections various Asian communities, organizations, municipal and state representatives had with each other.

My summer internship, while very enriching and fun, was also very short. However, I am happy to say that Mrs. Lawson has provided the wonderful opportunity to continue interning with her. I am grateful to her for putting in the time and effort to teach me important social skills, meet admirable and influential leaders, and inspire me to do what I can to assist my local Asian community, the Bangladeshi Community of Pennsylvania. I look forward to finishing the service directory, as well as have more experiences to learn about other cultural communities and learn from Mrs. Lawson herself about working for the state.

UM VERÃO EM LISBOA

This entry is by Isabella Roa, COL ’16

I didn’t know what to expect of my summer and at some moments before arriving in Lisbon, Portugal I felt as though I was entering the experience completely blindfolded. I had been accepted to the State Department’s Summer Internship Program in December of 2014 and had anxiously awaited my security clearance for the following five months, giving me enough time to prepare for what would be an extremely rewarding three months. However, when I arrived at Lisbon’s Portela Airport, I realized my experience abroad would not only be an opportunity for professional development, but also an incredible chance for personal growth.

I had only been to Lisbon once before and it was for a mere twenty-four hours. Although I have been studying Portuguese for the past two years, I was not sure I would be able to adjust to the language difference while at the same time integrating into the working environment at the US Embassy. At first, I found myself a bit embarrassed to practice my Portuguese, forcing me to speak in a mix of Spanish and English to find my apartment and manage my way through the city. Soon, however, I soon realized how much people appreciated my attempts, even if sometimes wrong, to speak Portuguese.

My first week of work in the Politics and Economics section of the US Embassy was overwhelming. I was amazed by how much trust was placed in me and by the variety of projects that my coworkers handled. On my first day, for exampled, I assisted in interviewing Portuguese students applying for the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship and helped plan the upcoming Fourth of July celebration that would be attended by hundreds of diplomats.

While I would sometimes attend meetings with members of Portugal’s political parties, represent the US at public events, or assist the ambassador and other coworkers with important visits such as that of Secretary of Energy, Dr. Ernest Moniz, much of my daily routine was focused on political research and the duties of a reporting officer. Every day I would study Portugal’s newspapers for critical events that could affect US foreign policy, translate them, and report them back in a newsletter sent to other European offices and to Washington DC. I found myself immersed in the world of Portuguese politics and economic affairs. My daily research culminated in a thorough cable that offered an overview of Portugal’s political landscape – the position, strategy, and popularity of each of the country’s competing parties – published two months before this year’s decisive Parliamentary elections.

In reality, my time in Lisbon was one of multifaceted growth. While my internship gave me an in depth experience into the US State Department, a career option I had long been thinking about, it also forced me to reach out of my comfort zone. While I lived in an apartment with several other students who were welcoming and willing to show me around Lisbon, I found that if I wanted to truly explore the city, I would have to do it on my own. Stepping away from Penn, my family, and friends, I found myself with an abundant amount of time for self-reflection, something I have found to be critical in my own personal development.

I want to thank Penn Career Services for granting me the funding that made my summer internship at the US Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal possible. As a Diplomatic History Major, this was an incredible experience that opened my eyes to a career in the State Department and allowed me to truly immerse myself in the field of foreign affairs.

Busy as a…

This entry is by Danica Fine, COL ’16

It’s mid-afternoon; the sun looms high in the sky, not yet blocked by the hints of rain clouds that linger in the distance. It’s hot. Almost unbearably hot. And, yet, just a few moments prior, I slipped into a heavy canvas jacket and donned a pair of thick leather gloves.

But I ignore the heat and the beads of sweat on my forehead, choosing, instead, to focus on the thousands of honey bees situated in the hive in front of me. Inspecting the frame of bees in my hands, I realize it’s not what I want and carefully place it back in the hive. The next frame is better – its cells are filled with eggs and young brood – so I set it aside and move on.

As I reach for the next frame, I notice something peculiar. The usual, gentle roar of the hive is being overtaken by a more intense buzzing from behind me.

I turn to face it, and, immediately, I’m frozen in place by the sight before me. Thousands of bees are pouring from the blue-green hive, zipping back and forth before heading out across the field. I easily recognize that the bees are swarming – their hive became too crowded and a portion of the bees decided to leave along with their queen to start a new hive elsewhere – but before this moment, I had only read or heard second-hand about the process.

Seeing it was an entirely different story.

I stand for a few minutes watching the mesmerizing frenzy unfold until the number of bees exiting the hive begins to dwindle. The hive is calming down, and, satisfied that I have witnessed this brilliant event, I turn to leave. Before I place my first step, I notice something strange: the traffic of bees in front of the hive starts to pick up and the frenzy begins once more. The bees are returning to the hive they just left! Instead of going inside, however, they cluster on the hive’s façade.

I’m baffled by the bees’ actions, unaware that such a thing ever happened.

In that moment, I realized that my years of acquiring knowledge on beekeeping could only prepare me for so much. The rest, of course, would have to come with experience. And seeing as this was my first day on the job, there was plenty of time for that.

——————–

This summer, with the help of a Career Services grant, I was given the opportunity to put my passion for beekeeping to work as I led my own research project under the guidance of Dr. David Tarpy at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Like most undergraduates, I was ecstatic simply to have received my summer research offer; I was even more thrilled to know that I would bring my research project down to NCSU’s Apiculture Program to work alongside professors renowned in the world of honey bees. Having come from a family of beekeepers, I saw this research opportunity as a dream come true.

The purpose of my research was to work toward finding an optimal level of potassium for honey bee consumption. I worked on a small scale, creating tiny colonies of only fifty honey bees (right) which I then fed sugar syrups mixed with varied potassium concentrations. By monitoring how quickly the colonies declined, I could determine which concentrations were best for the bees.

Unfortunately, this was more easily said than done.

Although I had an experimental design mapped out, certain issues arose at points during my research. I became well-acquainted with the notion that “Research is one step forward and two steps back.” For the most part, I was less than enthused when things didn’t always work out as planned, but I’m glad that I had my adviser’s encouragement and understanding to back me up as I worked to overcome the various experimental issues.

I may have had a great deal of my own work to focus on, but I didn’t let that stop me from experiencing as much as I could. From day one, I found myself seeing and learning about things that I had never before given a second thought about.

For example, during my first week at the lab, a fellow researcher asked me to help graft queens. Queen-grafting is a process where young, newly hatched larvae are carefully removed from their cells and placed in a larger, plastic cell along with a high-protein food supplement so that they will develop into queens (left). By doing this, our lab could create as many queens as was necessary for our research. I had never had the opportunity to graft queens, so being involved in the process was an amazing chance for me.

Even though my day-to-day tasks were often repetitive, I tried my best to stop and appreciate all of the moments I had this summer. On a particularly early morning at the lab, as I collected newly emerged honey bees for use in my experiment, I stopped for a few seconds to watch a few bees chew through the last bit of wax that kept them in their cells (right). It was a sublime moment for me, as it’s always been easy to overlook the tiny intricacies of the hive.

Not all of my experiences dealt directly with my research, however. Egged on by my colleagues, I started leaving my gloves behind when I went to work in the hives. Before coming to the lab, even the thought of working without gloves was terrifying to me. I gave it a chance, though, and found that working so closely with the bees made many of my afternoons that much more rewarding. It was definitely the best decision I made this summer.

Between my talented colleagues, the fantastic moments, and the success of my experiment, I could not have asked for a better research opportunity. I learned so much and accomplished more than I could have ever imagined going into the summer.

I would like to offer my most sincere thanks to Career Services for making this summer possible.

Never Too Good to be True

This entry is by Jonathan Sanchez, SEAS ’16

October 17^th, 2014 was a regular school day in the midst of my busy junior year schedule. On this day I received was from the Undergraduate Chair of the Mechanical Engineering department. The email was notifying all mechanical engineering students of an opportunity to work with a surgeon from HUP who was looking for an engineering student to help him develop an idea he had for a medical device that would be used to prevent hernia. After reading the project description, I honestly thought that this opportunity was too good to be true. I felt that there would be so many interested students, that it would be a waste of time for me to even try to get involved. After speaking to some of my friends, I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to send the surgeon an email simply explaining my interest in the project, so I did just that. Little did I know that this decision would end up changing the course of the rest of my Penn career and would even change my post-graduation plans.

After reviewing my resume and calling me in for an informal interview, Dr. Fischer called me to discus the project more in depth and to discus how we would be working together in the upcoming weeks. I was completely shocked. I was now fully involved in this amazing opportunity that just a few days ago seemed so far off and nearly impossible.

Over the next few weeks, Dr. Fischer outlined his ideas and explained some of the medical implications behind the proposed device. Although I cannot get into the details of the project because there is intellectual property behind it, the gist of it is to design and prototype a device that automates and standardizes the affixation of prophylactic mesh (a material often used in abdominal surgeries) onto the abdominal wall in order to prevent hernias from forming in patients who are at high risk.

After I spent several months figuring out the mechanics of the device and creating many 3D CAD models, Dr. Fischer decided to offer me a summer internship position to continue working with him on developing the technology and ultimately prototyping the device. During the summer, I made huge leaps in progress, not only in developing this technology, but also in progressing in my career as a future engineer. Dr. Fischer hired a professional engineer to serve as my mentor throughout the summer and through the guidance of my mentor, I was able to master a new, more powerful CAD program and use that program to design and 3D print our first prototype of the device. In addition to this, we also got a chance to run biomechanical tests of the device that I designed on cadaveric porcine fascia. The results of the tests were very positive with only some minor changes needed to be made. It was a truly remarkable experience to see the countless hours of work that I had put into this project finally manifest into tangible results.

The feedback that Dr. Fischer and I got from people in academia and in the medical field was incredible, so much so that Dr. Fischer founded a company, Paradigm Surgical, LLP, in order to give us a platform to continue to develop the device and hopefully mass produce it for use in hospitals across the country. In addition to this, with the help of IP personnel at Penn, we were even able to apply for a provisional patent for the innovative technology that we developed.

Dr. Fischer and I were also accepted and partook in the Penn I-Corps program. Through this 8-week summer accelerator program, we learned how to most effectively facilitate the growth of a start up such as Paradigm Surgical. It was extremely rewarding to be able to sit in on lectures from esteemed Wharton professors and learn about innovation from the business point-of-view.

Overall, this summer was absolutely amazing! I learned more about the engineering field than I ever thought I would in a 3 month span and, even more importantly I found a new passion for medical device design. I have continued to work with Dr. Fischer on our hernia project and on several other innovative medical technologies. I now plan on pursuing a career in this field after graduation.

It is amazing how a simple email could turn into such an extraordinary, life-changing opportunity. Even more importantly than all the technical and business lessons I learned this summer, this experience has taught me a life lesson, and that is that no opportunity is ever too good to be true.

Justice for Women

This entry is by Sarah Elnahal, COL ’16

When I accepted the internship with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, I was not sure what I want to do as a career. As a feminist, I knew I wanted to help women in some capacity, and I had been interested in law ever since I joined the mock trial team in high school. After spending three months working in the Juvenile Department and the Sexual Assault and Family Violence Department, I found my calling; I want to help women find justice for the wrongs they have faced.

As an undergraduate intern, my daily activities were pretty clerical. I would print out discovery (a collection of all the evidence in a case, interviews, police reports, and other relevant documents), approve charges, update statistics, and file. Although these tasks seem menial (and I have to admit, at times I did feel bored), they taught me so many important aspects of law. I learned about various charges and their definition, even correcting ADA charging mistakes. I saw the type of information needed to move forward with a case as well as the inner workings of the information collecting process.

Most importantly, however, I was able to read the cases and discuss them with the ADA. Most of the cases that came across my desk involved domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault, and child sexual assault. It was very difficult to read the cases and the testimonies, especially when it involved children. I was particularly passionate about working with ADA’s on sexual assault and child sexual abuse cases. Many of the children were so young that they did not have the vocabulary to be able to describe the sexual incidents properly during their interviews. I went with the ADAs to meet the victims, and it was so powerful to see these their strength to go through the laboring legal process.

After shadowing the lawyer’s and learning how they prepared for these cases, I would go to court with them. This was the hardest part of my summer experience. Defense attorneys often grilled adult women, and I could not imagine what it would be like to have someone invalidate a trauma you experienced. When children were questioned in court in sexual abuse cases, defense lawyers would often confuse the children, leading them to alter their testimony. Many of the children struggled to even tell their story, and the ADAs worked very hard to make the children feel comfortable in a courtroom setting.

Throughout this whole process, I saw how passionate the ADAs were. They worked long hours to make sure these women and children got the representation they deserved. In court, their passion came through in all their objections, cross examinations, and direct examinations. When I watched them, I realized I wanted to be them. I want to aid these women and children seek justice in a time when they may be feeling helpless or scared. My summer experience helped me form a specific goal, and I would like to thank Career Services for providing me with this life changing opportunity.