Sarah Coughlin ’23

Major: Psychology & Education, with elementary licensure

Finding My Place in Place-Based Education

I spent my summer as the Teaching Garden and Arts intern at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst, MA. The Hitchcock Center aims to educate and inspire people of all ages to take action for a healthy planet through a variety of educational programming. In line with my career goals, I spent the summer developing curriculum for the teaching garden and mentoring new camp staff. During mentorship, I demonstrated how to make lessons flow smoothly and in a developmentally appropriate way for the target audience. I focused on place-based learning to develop many creative lesson plans for the center including, but not limited to: edible scat, rainbow weaving and sensory sushi! My experience working at the Hitchcock Center proved to be invaluable, helping me to develop confidence in my abilities as an educator as I pursue elementary teacher licensure at MHC.

Miki Iwata ’24

Importance of soft skills in the new career era

This summer I learned how Psychology can have a vast impact on the real world. Social skill development is not only about individual psychological skill improvement, but also the organization's potential growth. Attending Mount Holyoke has cleared my vision of pursuing a career dealing with talent development. I worked as an intern at a consulting firm supporting small Japanese companies in developing their global markets. Since global mindsets are essential for overseas business expansion, the company values entrepreneurial education for younger generations. Therefore, the company created talent development programs for university students and new graduates seeking opportunities exploring global careers. Through this internship, I helped in the structuring and organization of the program to support participating students. Over the course of this internship, I gained valuable experiences that further stimulated my interest in learning the depth of talent development in individuals and the large impact it can have on organizations.

Benni Marque ’23

Summer at Joppa Flats: Aquariums to Altered Aspirations

Over the summer, I was a Coastal Education with Mass Audubon at Joppa Flats in Newburyport MA. I was teaching children and families about different habitats in Massachusetts. I learned and taught about the sandy beach, rocky shore, salt marsh, and pond habitats as well as learning about different birds that live in the area. I also was able to learn a little bit about the diets of the animals that lived in the aforementioned environments as well and the care that they require, as they were housed at the education center that at which I was an intern. I also learned a little bit about how tanks and aquariums work. I was also able to learn a lot about myself and the kind of work that I enjoy doing and change my ideas about what I want to do in the immediate future accordingly.

Mariam Baig ’24

Major: Biology

Pathways to STEM

I had the opportunity to work with envisions by World strides at the University of Denver and the University of Minnesota. WorldStrides is an educational travel-based company, which offers immersive career exploration and leadership development for participants. I will be providing an insight into my role as a program support being a biology major. During the program, I assisted advisors in the classroom with STEM components as well as unique activities.The program provided an incredibly STEM pathway to the elementary school students.This internship has not only kindled a desire to serve others, value diversity of opinions and take responsibility, but has also given me the greatest gift of being able to interact with others, guide them, learn from them and be someone they can look up-to. It has taught me leadership and the great responsibility that comes with authority. Indeed, it was a journey of self-discovery.

Mumtaz Fatima ’25

Major: Computer Science and Economics

Empathy and Community in Technology

While learning how to pave my career path through my summer internship, I learned how I can encourage students to create their own career paths. As a Summer Teaching Assistant at Girls Who Code, I worked to create community of female, trans, and gender non-binary high school students where they could envision themselves as future technologists. From debugging their websites to writing positive little feedback notes, I learned what values it takes to pave a career in tech as a minority. While the computer only understood rigid language of commands and syntax, students understood the language of empathy. This year at LEAP, I’m here to share how my journey in discovering my interests in Computer Science led me to curate engaging content, work on coding demos, and create community around inspiring students to pursue their own journeys in technology.