Summer interns with the College’s Office of Sustainability.
Sustainability is about evolution. That’s how Brian Fisher explains it. He’s the director of the College’s Office of Sustainability, which has been in existence now for nearly five years. “To sustain something,” he says, “we must invest in the process, because it’s the process that will create the mechanisms and support to continue to stimulate this evolution.”
He and his staff have successfully revamped the College’s waste stream, implemented a bicycle share program and had nearly a dozen water bottle refill stations installed around campus. But one their most successful – and sustainable – accomplishments is the office’s summer internship program, now in its fourth year. This summer, nearly 30 student interns from 13 different academic disciplines were involved. They worked in a broad range of initiatives throughout the Charleston community, including Zero Waste, sustainable food policy and sustainable transportation.
Ashlyn Spilis Hochschild ‘12, who coordinates the internship program, sees this particular initiative as genuine sustainability. “Our students are implementing sustainable initiatives in a wide range of areas at the College and in the community,” she explains. “Ultimately, we focus on their personal and professional development to prepare these students for life after graduation.”
According to Spilis Hochschild, the internship program has grown from an initial cohort of seven interns. And this past summer, the Office of Sustainability began orchestrating community partnership internships in which students worked with a variety of organizations including the College’s Center for Civic Engagement, GrowFood Carolina, Lowcountry Street Grocery and the Bee Cause Project. Within the internship program, she says, students serve on a volunteer basis (unless they’re Sustainability Fellows, who earn academic credit).
A wide range of students participate in the internship program. This summer there were business administration majors and physics majors, as well as students studying philosophy, historic preservation and community planning, and French, among others. Nineteen are undergraduates at the College and seven are recent graduates.
One of this summer’s interns is Arthur Philips ‘16, a philosophy major. Philips had the opportunity to work on a Zero Waste initiative with fellow intern Cara Lauria ’15 (geology), specifically developing a kit that can be used for event managers at the College who wish to minimize the waste impact of their gatherings. Philips wrote about that on the Office of Sustainability’s blog.
Nicole Fernandez worked with the College’s Center for Civic Engagement as part of her summer internship.
Nicole Fernandez ’16, a double major in biology and French, was another of the interns this summer. In that same blog, she writes about her experiences within the College’s Center for Civic Engagement and how the work of that office pertains to sustainability. “Civic engagement needs communal collaboration in order to be effective and yield a positive change and development for the community. Sustainability, too, requires this type of community-first thinking and collaboration in order to be truly effective.”
Katie Kerbel ’15, an arts management major, managed the Office of Sustainability’s Garden Apprenticeship Program, which she blogged about here. This program gives students experience growing food in rural and urban landscapes. They visited Blue Pearl Farms, the MUSC Urban Farm and worked with both the College’s grounds department and the Romney Street Garden.
Summer internships with the Office of Sustainability are just one of the opportunities available to students. There are also internships available during the academic year.
