Presenting: The TIP Book

Hot off the presses (actually, it's online), the TIP book is a collection of internship descriptions and advice provided by Tufts students for Tufts students. We in the Tufts Career Center are excited to provide Tufts students with 200 internship profiles packed with helpful advice from your classmates.

To browse the profiles, or search by career field, type of internship, location, student class year and major, check out the book at http://careers.tufts.edu/students/tip.asp

As you review the internship profiles, keep the following in mind:

• A successful internship search involves thorough research and information gathered from multiple sources. Thus, we encourage you to use these profiles as a complement to your other research. 
• The Internship Section of the Career Center website provides search tips and internship listing sites, including our databases - Jumbo Jobs, LACN and EngIn - where you’ll find thousands of internships for Tufts students. You’ll also find information about internship funding resources and much more. 
• Students who have listed their names on their profiles may be contacted for more information. Remember to thank them for sharing their time and advice with you! 
• A career counselor can help you clarify your goals and direct you to other helpful internship search resources. Come to daily drop-in hours or call 617.627.3299 for an appointment. 
• Our weekly Career eNews features career events that will help you learn about careers, find internships, and connect with alumni and employers.
• Mark your calendar for our spring fairs: Sci-Tech Fair, Wednesday, February 13, 2013 (for science, technology, and engineering) Internship Fair, Wednesday, February 27, 2013 (for media, marketing, communications, education, non-profits, arts, finance, business, healthcare, and government) 

Thank You to all Tufts students who contributed to this publication!  Want to be included in next year's edition?  Look out for an e-mail this summer asking for submissions!

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TIP Spotlight: Briana Bouchard E14

Throughout the summer, we will be featuring the stories of current Tufts students. You'll find internships like these (and many more!) in the Tufts Internship Profile (TIP) Book, coming this fall. The TIP Book is a collection of internship descriptions and advice provided by Tufts students for Tufts students. Watch your Career Center eNews for more information. 

Name: Briana Bouchard
Class Year: 2014
Major: Mechanical Engineering
Hometown: Madbury, NH
Internship organization: Allergan, Medford, MA
Internship title: R&D Engineering Intern

1. Describe your internship organization. 
Globally, Allergan is a multi-specialty health care company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing innovative pharmaceuticals, biologics, and medical devices.

 2. Describe your internship responsibilities.
Working in Research and Development, my responsibilities range greatly from day to day. I could be writing a study report one day and be preparing test samples the next day. For the most part, I am providing any support I can to the textile engineers in my department. Sometimes they are looking for specific support with a mechanical engineering related task and other times they are looking for general support with an upcoming project. These tasks can be as simple as creating graphs of data in excel and can get as complicated as creating a surgical model to show how to use our product. The best part about it is that not every project has a foreseeable outcome or solution. We spend a lot of time discussing and thinking outside of the box.

3. What has led you to pursue this type of work? 
I’ve always been interested in the medical field, but I wasn’t sure that medical school was the right fit for me. In the last couple of years, I’ve decided that I want to apply my mechanical engineering degree to some sort of medical research. After working at Biogen Idec, a pharmaceutical company in Cambridge, MA, I realized that I wanted to go into the medical device industry. I saw how these devices could improve patient care and allow doctors to offer treatments in new and more effective ways. In looking for summer internships, I applied to many medical device companies and several more traditional mechanical engineering internships. When the opportunity at Allergan presented itself, I knew that the internship was exactly what I was looking for. It was the perfect balance between mechanical engineering and medical research.

4. Describe one highlight of your internship experience thus far? 
One of the first major projects I contributed to was a breast reconstruction model that our marketing team could use to show surgeons how our product works. We sent the model out for use at a conference and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive. It was an amazing experience to know that I had made significant contributions to a model that would allow surgeons to understand the benefits of our product.

5. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to other interns?
I think that in any internship experience it is crucial to broaden your scope of learning by offering to take on projects that aren’t necessarily part of your job description. Learning what other people do in the organization is important and you could find something that you didn’t know existed or that you are more interested in.

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TIP Spotlight: Scott Blumenthal A14

Throughout the summer, we will be featuring the stories of current Tufts students. You'll find internships like these (and many more!) in the Tufts Internship Profile (TIP) Book, coming this fall. The TIP Book is a collection of internship descriptions and advice provided by Tufts students for Tufts students. Watch your Career Center eNews for more information.

Name: Scott Blumenthal
Class Year: 2014
Majors: Psychology and Economics
Hometown: Simsbury, CT
Internship organization: Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, Boston, MA

1. Describe your internship organization.

Scott Blumenthal

As is surely the case for any unpaid undergraduate legal internship, a portion of my work consists of maintaining lists and databases, filing, transcribing interviews, and performing other clerical support duties. While such tasks may appear trivial, I view these housekeeping responsibilities as providing me with insight into many of the activities the Assistant District Attorneys perform in enforcing the law and providing for a safe community. I have also been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to sit in on a number of forensic interviews with sexual abuse victims. The stories I hear are extremely upsetting, yet by being able to sit with the attorney and social worker assigned to the case, I become a part of their team and am able to give my input as well as help in piecing together the facts. It is thus rewarding to know that at least in some small way I too am helping these victims. A unique aspect of the District Attorney Internship Program is attending trials, visiting the police crime lab, and participating in the formal presentations offered by members of the office on substantive areas of law that the District Attorney's Office is called upon to enforce. Through my interactions with the office staff, I have been exposed to the often complex process by which precious legal resources are allocated to competing public demands. These many activities have allowed me to put my future education into context and also experience first-hand the intangible rewards that one derives from practicing law in the public sector.

 3. How did you become interested in this type of work? 
Lawyers usually get a bad rap; this combined with the fact that both my parents are lawyers seems to lead others to conclude, when talking about future careers, that I want no part of the profession. Ironically though, I’ve been fascinated by the law since childhood, in part due to a natural inclination to vigorously advocate for and negotiate topics important to me. At Tufts I have tested that interest through various courses, including two in political science which have provided valuable insight into intricate aspects of the U.S. and foreign governments and several landmark U.S. court cases. I have also taken a course in logic, which my advisor strongly recommended as preparation for the LSAT and to gain a sense of the work ahead in law school. Having always loved math, I was fascinated by the intersection of math and the logic of persuasion, and see this course as an important foundation for the study of law. Perhaps more significant, I have taken a Social Psychology course with Professor Sommers, during which I learned a great deal about his research in the legal arena. I was so intrigued that I pursued and became a research assistant for Professor Sommers (now my advisor) regarding the effects of racial biases on eye-witness testimony. Although any law office would have provided opportunities to learn more about a legal career, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office has stood out for specific reasons. Each lawyer with whom I’ve spoken has uniformly described practicing in the public sector as the most rewarding of their professional experiences. Building on this, the Suffolk DA’s Office is comprised of ten units focusing on different facets of law, and this variety has been extremely useful in guiding me toward specific areas of public sector practice that I find most intriguing. Indeed, and seemingly icing on the cake for me, I learned that in 2004, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley empanelled a blue-ribbon task force to address wrongful conviction based on racially biased eyewitness testimony, nearly the exact focus of my current research. It is thrilling to have this opportunity to observe the real-world implications of my psychology research.

4. Describe one highlight of your internship experience thus far?
Likely the best highlight of my internship experience thus far was the court case I watched in my first few weeks at the District Attorney’s Office – a murder trial that I followed from jury selection through to the judge’s final sentencing. Not only was the case itself fascinating, but it featured our office’s First Assistant District Attorney Pat Haggan along with one of the most successful defense attorneys in Massachusetts, Rosemary Scapicchio. To watch two highly skilled attorneys in action was such an eye-opening and memorable experience, as I was not only able to learn about general court procedures, but I also picked up on many of the attorneys’ highly effective strategies and habits. After this one trial alone, I went from having zero court experience prior to this internship to feeling like I had been observing court cases for months, totally comfortable with the environment and with the various goings-on.

5. Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about you or your internship experience?
A great aspect of my internship at the District Attorney’s Office that one might not receive in a different law environment is the weekly “Brown-bag lunches.” These lunches consists of the interns gathering in one of the office’s larger conference rooms and eating lunch while listening to one of the attorneys talk to us on a range of topics, such as how they got to where they are today or some life-changing court case that they tried while working at the DA’s Office. One attorney went into the minute details of his experience convicting the “Craigslist Killer,” while another told us all about his handling of the Clark Rockefeller case (a court case that has since been written about in books as well as featured in a movie on Showtime). While these top attorneys in the office surely do not have the time to speak with every intern individually over the course of the summer, the brown-bag lunches provide a seemingly very personal interaction with them, providing us tremendous insight into the profession.

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TIP Spotlight: Lia Weintraub A14

Throughout the summer, we will be featuring the stories of current Tufts students. You'll find internships like these (and many more!) in the Tufts Internship Profile (TIP) Book, coming this fall. The TIP Book is a collection of internship descriptions and advice provided by Tufts students for Tufts students. Watch your Career Center eNews for more information.

Name: Lia Weintraub
Class Year: 2014
Majors: International Relations and Spanish
Hometown: West Hartford, CT
Internship organization: Be the Change, Inc., Boston, MA


1. Describe your internship organization. 
Be the Change, Inc. runs national issue based campaigns driven by broad cross-partisan coalitions of non-profits, social entrepreneurs, policymakers, academics, and citizens. The goals of the campaigns are to inspire culture change and accelerate public policy development. I am most involved with the Opportunity Nation campaign, which strives to decrease the opportunity gap and expand economic mobility in the United States. The campaign has focused on pathways to success for 16-24 year olds.

2. Describe your internship responsibilities in detail. 
As an intern at Be the Change, I have the opportunity to contribute to various departments within the organization. Thus far in my internship, I have worked primarily on development and policy strategizing. For development, I have identified potential donors and learned the importance of maintaining accurate records and contact information. With policy, I have done research regarding introduced legislation that fits into Opportunity Nation’s plan to support 16-24 year olds as they enter school and the work force. I have researched congressmen to identify their level of interest in increasing access and affordability of higher education, supporting career and technical education, and supporting pathways to get disconnected youth back on track.

3. What has led you to pursue this specific internship?
I guess I would call myself a big ideas person. I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to create concrete solutions to pressing issues in our country and around the world. At Be the Change, I am surrounded by idealists like myself who believe that, through grassroots organizing, coalition management, and policy development, we can solve the opportunity gap in the United States. My participation in the Tisch Scholars program has made me passionate about public service and taught me the importance of being active in my home community.

4. Describe one highlight of your internship experience thus far? 
One of the best days at my internship was when we had an all-staff meeting. Employees from the Washington D.C. and New York offices came to Boston so the entire team could be together. We played ice breakers, analyzed how each of us deals with conflict, and discussed a plan for the organization moving forward. I appreciated this opportunity to meet the other interns and staff people. We got into great conversations about the structural causes that prevent people from being able to rise up in society and what needs to change to reinstate the American Dream.  

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TIP Spotlight: Megan Clark A14

Throughout the summer, we will be featuring the stories of current Tufts students. If you are interested in sharing your own internship experience with Tufts students, please consider participating in the annual TIP book. The TIP book is a collection of internship descriptions and advice provided by Tufts students for Tufts students. Click here to share information about your internship experience by August 1, 2012 and enter to win an iPad.*

Name: Megan Clark
Class Year: 2014
Majors: History and English
Hometown: Acton, MA
Internship Organization: The Fairbanks House Historical Site, operated by The Fairbanks Family in America, Inc., Dedham, MA
Internship title: Curatorial Intern

1. Describe your internship organization. 
The Fairbanks House is the oldest surviving timber-frame house in North America and is operated by the Fairbanks Family in America, Inc., which has cared for the house since 1902. The Fairbanks House is open to the public May through October and allows people to experience 17th through 19th century history. The Fairbanks Family in America, Inc. also collects and preserves documents and artifacts relating to the Fairbanks family and the Fairbanks House and places them within a wider historical context.  

2. Describe your internship responsibilities.
This summer, I have been responsible for two major projects focused on educational programming and archival management. Every third grader in Dedham visits the Fairbanks House but, until recently, the Fairbanks House did not have an official tour designed specifically for students. I researched the Massachusetts third grade curriculum and designed a tour that better connects to aspects of that curriculum and engages the students by asking them more questions. I then designed a training PowerPoint, which the Fairbanks House curator will administer next fall, in order to teach the tour guides, or docents, how to lead tours for students. I also created a packet of recommendations for conducting mixed-generational tours in order to help the docents engage visitors of many different age levels. I am currently working in the Fairbanks House archives and am assisting the curator, Meaghan Siekman, to create a new organizational system. We are also researching the context of previously unidentified or unexplained documents and photographs. In addition to these projects, I lead both normal and school group tours of the Fairbanks House at least one day a week and conduct research in order to add to our knowledge about the Fairbanks House, the Fairbanks family, and Dedham history from the 17th through the 19th century.

3. What led you to pursue type of work?
I think explaining history, at its best, is like telling a story. I have always loved history and have wanted to share that love with others. I also enjoy tutoring; I tutored all subjects in the Academic Support Room at my high school and tutored fourth graders in writing last summer. I get so excited when I see a student finally understand a concept, make a connection, or grow to enjoy a topic that they previously disliked. After I graduate, I would like to find a job in which I can share my excitement for learning, especially historical learning, with others. I have considered teaching but I also wanted to explore a less traditional educational career. I looked for internships at museums or historic houses because I believed these internships would allow me to pursue my passion for history and share that passion with others. My internship this summer has both allowed me to share my love of history and conduct research that will enhance the museum experience for future visitors.

4. Describe a highlight of your internship experience thus far?
The highlight of my internship experience thus far has been creating an official tour for third grade school groups because it combined so many of my interests and helped me to develop new and pre-existing skills. First, this project combined my passion for history and education. Secondly, during this project, I became a much more efficient researcher which, in turn, made the research even more fun. I also developed my communication and teaching skills because I had to decide which bits of information to share with students and, then, how to communicate that information to them. I also had to describe the goals of the new tours to the docents and explain how to achieve them. It is very exciting to know that I made significant changes to the way the Fairbanks House will conduct school group tours and to see how the students reacted to the changes that I was able to introduce this summer.

5. Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about your internship experience?
Interning at the Fairbanks House has been a phenomenal experience! I have developed new skills—such as archival management—and strengthened pre-existing ones—such as research efficiency and educational programming design. This internship has led me to seriously consider a career in public history, which would allow me to simultaneously pursue my love for history and education outside of a classroom setting.

*No TIP profiles will be included on this blog without the student's permission.

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TIP Spotlight: Sarah Tralins A14

 

Throughout the summer, we will be featuring the stories of current Tufts students. If you are interested in sharing your own internship experience with Tufts students, please consider participating in the annual TIP book. The TIP book is a collection of internship descriptions and advice provided by Tufts students for Tufts students. Click here to share information about your internship experience by August 1, 2012 and enter to win an iPad.*



Name: Sarah Tralins
Class Year: 2014
Major: Child Development
Hometown: Miami, FL
Internship Organization: Room to Grow, Boston, MA
Internship Title: Development and Program Intern

1. Describe Room to Grow.
Room to Grow is a non-profit based in Boston and New York that works to enrich the lives of infants born into poverty throughout their first three years of development - the most critical years that are unaccounted for in the United States' educational and healthcare system for low-income families. Expecting parents are referred to Room to Grow by a hospital or medical professional and visit our location in the Back Bay for one-on-one appointments with our social workers. We also provide needed baby items, included clothing, gear, and books to ensure a healthy start for the child.

 2. What are your primary internship responsibilities? 
My primary responsibility is to work with the managing staff to ensure that in-kind donations are acknowledged, that community relations are strong, and to help out in other areas where I can. I provide fundraising and development support while learning about non-profit management; I've worked with the Managing Director, Inventory Coordinator and other staff to gain insight on how non-profits work behind the scenes.

3. What led you to pursue this type of work?
I've always loved working with kids and helping others; I'm a Child Development major, a Tisch Scholar, and very active in community service. I became interested in non-profit management during Nancy Lippe's "Experimenting with Philanthropy" class. The class acted as a board and we awarded various non-profits a total of $20,000, funded by the Lady Sunshine Foundation and the Highland Family Foundation. We interviewed professionals at different non-profits in Somerville, Medford and Chinatown to learn more about their organizations and hear their grant proposals. Meeting with the people who ran the show at these non-profits really inspired me to learn more about the management and business side of these amazing organizations.

4. Describe one highlight of your internship experience thus far. 
Elizabeth, my supervisor and the Community Relations Director, gives me projects that are challenging. For example, I had to write a personalized letter thanking a big donor for their recent work relating to a collection drive and fundraising event that was both customized and professional. When I gave it to Elizabeth for review, she said I'd finally gotten the swing of how to reach out to donors, as well as appeal to them to continue giving. I felt so proud of myself knowing that in only a few weeks time, I'd gotten the hang of this work - and while she did edit a few small things, I saw that I'd learned a new and valuable skill.

5. Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about you or your internship experience? 
Every day I'm in for something new! I helped organize a fundraising event at our new office space (and blew up balloons, too) during my first week, and then started doing research on early child development and poverty for the organization’s Director the next. I've been able to really experience every side of non-profit and business management just by reaching out to the staff and asking questions. They want me to succeed and I want to learn from them, so it's been a great relationship. Plus, getting to explore the Back Bay and get a feel for what a real job is like (I go in three times a week, 9-5) has been really nice.

*No TIP profiles will be included on this blog without the student's permission.

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