Newswise — Divya Ullal will spend the summer where mules carry water, in brutal heat she is told reaches 104 degrees in the shade. Yet, her internship with the International Medical Corps (IMC) in Chad " the result of an Ursinus College course she took in Human Rights with a former Ambassador " will allow her to gain a unique perspective before she applies to medical schools.
Internships abroad, which are becoming a standard piece of many Study Abroad programs, enhance immersion into the foreign culture and add to a student's marketability when job-hunting. At Ursinus College, internships are now standard in two study abroad programs, and several professors have been arranging international work experiences. Ullal, of Cherry Hill, N.J., who graduated Ursinus May 15, became interested in the IMC through her professor, Joseph Melrose, a retired U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone, who himself consulted for the IMC in Iraq last summer. Ullal, who majored in biology, will write programs to improve the health care system, which has been taxed by the influx of Sudanese refugees, she said.
Ursinus Study Abroad Coordinator Melissa Hardin said the trend toward internships abroad "is partly a response to the greater trend, experiential learning." Faculty-led programs, while beneficial to students who may not otherwise go abroad, are enhanced by internships. Internships in a faculty-led Ursinus in London program, arranged by the Center for Academic Programs Abroad, allow "students to work in real settings on common projects," said Hardin.
In a faculty program to Spain, where a language barrier may exist, students work in more service-oriented internships like non-government organizations. "These are less of a career path and less connected to their majors. But both help students learn the culture," said Hardin.
Faculty members like Professor Melrose are also instrumental in setting up internships abroad, such as a summer internship in Brussels, Belgium, last summer, where Class of 2004 member Michelle Fontaine of Fort Bragg, N.C., worked as an assistant regional security officer in the State Department's U.S. Embassy. "My international relations and foreign language courses, and my involvement with the model United Nations organization through Ursinus prepared me," she said. Although she recently obtained a job as a financial analyst, she said her internship in Brussels helped her develop the independence she needed to move to Chicago for her new job.
Last fall, the Ursinus-run Madrid program saw junior Amy Hollaman of Stratford, Conn., and senior Jenna-Lyn Ryckebusch of May's Landing, N.J., interning at Proyecto Hombre, a drug rehab non-governmental organization. Seven students worked at Colegio Logos, a bilingual private school. During the last Ursinus program in London, Elizabeth Drobit-Blair (Class of 2004) of Wyncote, Pa., a politics major, worked with the Conservative Party in Parliament's House of Commons. Junior Nicole Frates of Mantua, N.J., a communications major, interned with Tattler Magazine, serving as a fact-checker for the publication's travel and restaurant guide. Ursinus faculty helped rising seniors Nick Peacock of Durham, Pa., and Samit Patel of Voorhees, N.J., to work in an advanced biology lab at the Tubingen University Institute of Human Genetics during a study abroad program in Tubingen, Germany last fall.
This summer, various students of Professor Melrose will intern with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev; the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv; and the Cultural Broadcasting Organization of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
Some students seek their own internships abroad. Rising sophomore Dina Yarmus of Philadelphia, a biochemistry/molecular biology and French major, will work at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University analyzing yeast strains to identify the activities that process DNA crosslink repair intermediates. The internship came about through the highly selective Wistar Institute's High School Fellowship program, through which she was recommended to an Oxford researcher. Ursinus is partially funding some expenses. Yarmus hopes the internships will "be a milestone in my pursuit of a career in scientific research."
Ursinus College, founded in 1869, is a highly selective, nationally ranked, independent, coeducational liberal arts college, located on a scenic, wooded, 168-acre campus, 28 miles from Center City Philadelphia. Known for quality programs in the arts and sciences, it is one of only 8 percent of U.S. colleges to possess a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. The college's website is located at http://www.ursinus.edu.
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