Thirteen Hamilton students received college funding to pursue an unpaid internship over the summer. While pursuing internships is an increasingly popular move for students, the realities pose certain problems. Most available positions are unpaid, requiring students to fund their own housing and living expenses as well as working for free, all in pursuit of relevant work experience. Thanks to grants from alumni and parents, Hamilton students can apply for funding to support their unpaid summer internships. For many students, these grants allow them to pursue an internship they could not otherwise accept.
The Joseph F. Anderson Internship Fund is given in honor of a 1944 Hamilton graduate who served the College for 18 years as vice president for communications and development. The fund in his name provides individual stipends to support full-time internships for students wishing to expand their educational horizons in preparation for potential careers after graduation. This summer's recipients were:
Alana Pudalov '08. Pudalov worked with children as an assistant teacher at the Cornerstone Therapeutic Nursery, where she learned about child psychology in a scholastic situation.
Jessica Lewis '07. Lewis worked as a research intern at the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington, D.C., a non-profit organization which addresses the needs of women, promotes public dialogue, and strengthens families, communities and societies, where she was mainly involved in gathering information.
Sara Feuerstein '07. Feuerstein worked as an intern in the Publications Office of the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., where she acted as assistant to the correspondent, senior writer for the tri-weekly embassy publication "News from France" and a diplomatic writer for speeches and official embassy statements.
Alison Chiaramonte '08. Chiaramonte worked on Capitol Hill as an intern in the offices of Congressmen Sherwood Boehlert and John Larson, where her main duties included responding to constituent mail, giving tours and attending briefings and hearings for other staff members.
Elaine Coggins '07. Coggins worked at the Laboratory for Developmental Studies at Harvard University where she helped run a study about how children react to music. Her job helping to find families to participate in the study, conduct the study and analyze the results.
Katherine McElroy '08. McElroy interned at the Vermont grass-roots music group Big Heavy World, where she worked as a grant writer and manager/administrator of an online store.
Tumelano Gopolang '08. Gopolang worked with the Trinity Universtity Haiti Program in Washington, D.C., where she researched the uses and delivery of economic aid pledged to Haiti in 2004 in order to understand the problems which had created Haiti's current economy and how other countries had offered to help.
Elena Filekova '08. Filekova interned in New York City with the ING Funds of Funds Group, where she worked with analysts on due diligence reports on hedge funds the company was thinking of investing in.
Keya Advani '08. Advani worked at The Global Justice Center, a non-governmental organization dedicated to enforcing the affirmative rights of women to political representation, in New York City. She worked on fundraising-oriented tasks as well as creating materials for an Introduction to Feminism class for Burmese refugees.
Caitlin Jacobs '07. Jacobs traveled to South Africa to intern at the Makalali Game Reserve, where she helped with projects related to the lion pride on the Reserve as well as other issues, such as managing large predators on a small reserve.
Sean Sullivan '07 interned at ABC news magazine's Nightline program in New York City. He received a stipend from the George and Martha Darcy Internship Support Fund. The fund provides cost-of-living stipends to students possessing a B average or better and pursuing full-time internship opportunities in the areas of communications, writing, advertising, public relations, publishing, and/or media, including print journalism and telecommunications.
The Jeffrey Fund for Science provides stipends for off-campus student internships in the sciences and/or on-campus faculty-student collaborative research projects in the sciences. This year's recipient was Matt Crowson '09, who worked as a research intern at The John & Jennifer Ruddy Canadian Cardiovascular Genetics Centre at the Ottowa Heart Institute. Crowson's research dealt with cardiac genetics.
The Richard and Patsy Couper Grant is awarded in honor of Patsy and the late Richard Couper '44 who for several years have supported summer internships for Hamilton students working in non-profit internships in library science, museums or other non-profit organizations. This year's recipient was Ruth Dibble '07, who worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Dibble interned in the department of European Decorative Arts as an assistant to the curator of the collection.
-- by Laura Trubiano '07
