Dana Internships and Mentorships
 

Here are just a few of the internships and mentorships that upperclassmen Dana Scholars have done in the past that solidify the motto regarding these requirements, You can really do ANYTHING that motivates you!

Laura Sutherland ’05… Laura interned with an obstetrician/gynecologist, shadowing at private clinics, fertility centers, hospitals and free clinics. 

For one credit of mentorship, she worked on a project entitled, An Examination of Examination by Speculum. Laura spent two semesters researching the form, function, and history of the speculum. She researched the medical, economic, social, and political histories of the speculum. The project is now the basis for her Fulbright proposal.

In the Summer of 2004, Laura will be working on a project with a Muhlenberg Scholar colleague, two Music Department faculty members, and a Physics professor to translate words and conversations into music. They plan to translate speech frequencies and work on re-creating personalities and conversations in musical compositions through choices in instrumentation, tone, pitch, and pattern.

Mike Posternack ’05 Mike assisted a writer of the Morning Call in his independent research of the history of the Allentown Jewish population.  The mentorship, called “Local Jewish Histography,” required Mike to visit the archives of local Jewish synagogues in order to gather statistics, pictures, and other resources.

Diana Robillard ’05 As her first mentorship, Diana helped coordinate Science Day at Hanover Elementary in Bethlehem, PA.  She organized a group of approximately eighty Muhlenberg students to visit the school and demonstrate scientific experiments and presentations in order to raise interest in the sciences.

Diana earned her second mentorship unit in Poland through participation in The March of Remembrance and Hope, a Muhlenberg special topics course that takes college students to the country to tour the sites of former concentration camps and meet with survivors of the Holocaust. Diana was not an official student in the class, so in order to gain credit, she met with the class every other week to present her independent research.  Her focus was on how we perceive and create memorials. The mentorship culminated in a presentation to middle school students about her experience through pictures, historical information, and journal entries.  

Betsy Woerner, '06...  Betsy is engaged in a two-semester independent study with Dr. Jeff Pooley of the Communications department.  The object of the study is to look at and formulate an understanding of the way individuals come to think of themselves as individuals within and outside of a social context. The mentorship is centered on identity construction, the difference between linguistic and visual representation, post modernism through the lens of language and art theory and works of literature such as Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Jared Fine, '06...  Jared will be interning in the District Attorney's office in Springfield, MA.  Among many tasks, he will assist the session clerk in the courtroom and read the dockets with the charges to those accused of misdemeanors.

Meghan Sweeney, '06...  For her internship unit, Meghan will be working at Scherline & Associates, a law firm in Allentown.  She will be assisting lawyers with projects in several areas of law, including personal injury, criminal, and real estate.  The firm is included in the local law firms that have sponsored interns from Muhlenberg in the past.

Jessica Krausz, '05... For her internship unit Jessica worked as a dental assistant at the Lehigh Valley Hospital Dental Clinic. She saw a wide variety of procedures and patients during her nine hours a week at the clinic.

For her mentorship credit, Jessica worked with Dr. Zumas, the instructor for Health Care Economics, doing a survey and analysis of the dental insurance industry. She found that doing the survey made the project a lot of fun. For her second mentorship credit, Jessica is coordinating Science Day, which is when Muhlenberg students go to a local elementary school and spend the entire day doing science projects with the students. Science Day is a fun way to earn a half-credit Dana mentorship, and the event is always a big success among both the college and elementary students. 

 

Zach Weiss, '05... One of Zach's mentorship credits was earned when he put together a video for the College's Center for Ethics, centered around their theme of Sustainability. The video was a compilation of events held by the center, tied together with a psuedo- comedic storyline. It was created for promotional purposes and to advocate the work that the center does and the impact it has on the community. 

For his internship credit Zach spent the summer of 2004 in Hollywood, CA with an independent film company, Collaboration Filmworks. He worked to put together a short documentary, aimed at American youth, that reveals the "truth" about our political system and its history. Along with other interns, Zach was responsible for coming up with concepts for the documentary, research, interviews, on-location shooting, and presentations, among other tasks.

  

In addition, there are also regularly occurring internships and mentorships that are available in both the fall and spring semesters, such as editing the Dana Interviewer, designing the Dana website,  interning at Sacred Heart and St. Luke’s Hospitals, and coordinating Science Day.  If you have any questions or concerns regarding any of the Dana requirement contact Dr. Hashim.