internships

Student’s Seminar Used Fashion to Spotlight Northern Michigan History

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The "A Century of Fashion" at the Little Traverse Historical Society
Claire Mullins ’26 will offered a Zoom about her exhibit, “A Century of Fashion.”
Historical dress on display in fashion exhibit at Little Traverse Historical Society

Online Presentation

Claire Mullins ’26 worked as an intern with the Little Traverse Historical Museum this summer, researching and installing the display “A Century of Fashion.” Claire’s online presentation on October 26 discussed her work via Zoom.

Kalamazoo College student Claire Mullins ’26 told a Zoom audience about her summer internship while sharing her research on the history of northern Michigan fashion on Thursday, October 26.

During the online event, sponsored by North Central Michigan College, Mullins detailed an exhibit of her creation titled A Century of Fashion, which is now on display at the Little Traverse Historical Society in Petoskey. The exhibit includes about 10 dresses that were donated to the society’s museum over the years along with educational storyboards she drafted while working with a clothing and costume historian. Her presentation went over each time period the dresses are from, what they’re made of, and why they would be worn.

“I want to work for a big museum or on archeological digs one day, so I’m hoping a presentation like this can show I have museum experience and that I already know how to use some museum software while putting on a display like this,” Mullins said. “I also hope the presentation will not only lead to awareness of the Little Traverse Historical Society, but maybe lead to some visits and draw some donations.”

Mullins, a classics major, said she developed a passion for fashion when she visited the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and saw the dresses that First Ladies have worn over the years. However, she wasn’t necessarily thinking about fashion when she sought an internship through Handshake, the College’s platform for jobs and internships. She was more concerned about finding an opportunity close to her Lewiston, Michigan, home, leading her to the Little Traverse Historical Society. There, Mullins interviewed with Executive Director Jane Garver, whose daughter, Grace, graduated from K this year.

Black Harvey Berin dress reflects women's fashion from 1953
Mullins found this 1953 Harvey Berin dress valued at more than $4,000 in a storage area at the Little Traverse Historical Society.
Claire Mullins dressed in personal protective equipment
Mullins dressed in personal protective equipment to explore an old storage area and found one of the key additions to her exhibit, “A Century of Fashion.”
Olive green dress reflects women's fashion from the 1880s
An olive green dress that dates to the 1880s is among several historical dresses on dislay at the Little Traverse Historical Society in Petosky.
Harvey Berin tag from dress in fashion exhibit
Mullins uncovered a Harvey Berin dress valued at more than $4,000 during her internship.

“Our K connection helped in the interview, but I told her I was interested in history and that I wanted to specifically work at a museum,” Mullins said. “It went really well, we talked about K a lot, and when she called me back, she told me I got the job.”

Mullins started the internship by archiving some of the historical society’s collections in an online database until Garver mentioned that most of her interns undertake a project of their own choosing. About that time, Mullins visited her employer’s storage unit, where she found racks upon racks of clothing, dresses in particular.

With changing membership and management, along with a flooded old house that formerly served as a storage area, most of the items were undocumented, so Mullins took it upon herself to catalog as much as possible while arranging an on-display exhibit.

To secure her full exhibit, Mullins even went as far as donning personal protective equipment (PPE) to sift through a crawlspace once used for storage that contractors had haphazardly filled with spray insulation. That search—despite a frightening experience involving a mannequin arm suddenly appearing from under the insulation—proved to be fruitful: She found a 1953 Harvey Berin couture dress, custom made by hand in New York City and valued at more than $4,000.

“It wasn’t in our online database, which was the only way we could figure out where a lot of this stuff came from,” Mullins said. “Much of it was donated in the 90s and it wasn’t put in the computer system correctly. A lot of times, the person whose name was on it wasn’t even the person who donated it, so I’m also hoping that the presentation might lead someone to say, ‘My gosh, I remember my grandma wearing that dress,’ or ‘I think my mother wore that one time,”’so we can include that.”

Computer Science Internship Pairs Sports with Technology

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When Jordan Doyle ’26 thinks about what prompted her love for computer science, she remembers a turtle from her childhood. The half-shelled protagonist was the star of a block-coding application that challenged her and children like her to send it across a screen in a number of moves.

“I got into it when I was little because it felt like a puzzle to me,” Doyle said. “I loved puzzles and coding was just a puzzle to solve.”

Since, she has continued seeking puzzles through computer science. Doyle built her interest and knowledge in classes throughout high school, while specialties such as cybersecurity piqued her interest even more. And now, Doyle is anticipating that she will declare a computer science major in the upcoming academic year at Kalamazoo College, where she also plays women’s lacrosse and participates in the Computer Science Society and the Eco Club.

This summer, she is building more technology experience away from Kalamazoo while working alongside a network of cohorts and professionals, thanks to a Women in Sports Technology (WiST) fellowship.

WiST is a non-profit organization that seeks to drive transformative growth opportunities for women in fields ranging from athletics biotechnology to sports gambling. The organization chose 22 fellows this year from 21 schools across the country, such as Duke University, Stanford University and—with Doyle’s fellowship—Kalamazoo College.  All of them serve in internships of up to eight weeks with a sports technology enterprise or innovative startup while receiving a grant of up to $5,000, plus travel stipends, if necessary.

Computer science major Jordan Doyle wearing a women's lacrosse jersey
Jordan Doyle ’26, a midfielder on the Kalamazoo College women’s lacrosse team, is interning this summer with Sports-Reference.com through Women in Sports Technology.

As a rising sophomore, Doyle is interning remotely from her home in Troy, Michigan, on a software engineering team with Sports-Reference.com, a group of sites that provides statistics and sabermetrics to sports fans.

“They look to democratize data,” she said. “If you look on any of their websites, you’ll see tables full of data for football, soccer, baseball—it’s a bunch of reference sites that can help you find the stats from almost any game. I focus mostly on finding and resolving bugs on the website, as well as doing some testing work and adding a couple of features on my own.”

WiST places interns like Doyle in positions that touch on both technology and sports because women are drastically underrepresented in sports-related and STEM professions, and in STEM majors in higher education. Women comprise only 28% of the workforce in STEM-related careers and just 19% of computer and information science majors in higher education, according to the American Association for University Women. That makes Doyle’s experience with Sports-Reference.com even more valuable to her.

“It’s empowering to know that I’m getting opportunities to move forward in this career path,” Doyle said. “As women we are one of the underrepresented groups and I love having this opportunity to connect with other women who have similar interests so I can see their successes throughout their careers. I love the idea of having opportunities that create change in the world through technology.”

Her Future is so Bright, She Invented Shades

Jordan Doyle’s experience with technology and innovation doesn’t stop at computers.

Doyle was participating in a lacrosse match on a sunny fall day in seventh grade when she grew frustrated with EyeBlack, a substance that rolls on under an athlete’s eyes to reduce glare. The negative experience led her to research visors for her protective goggle, while only finding products for sports such as football and softball.

With necessity being the mother of invention, Doyle made her own visor, designing it with the plastic of a salad container and a clinging shade shield that is commonly put on cars. She worked more in high school innovation classes that helped her design it further, and a meeting with a patent attorney later yielded sketch drawings and a patent.

Since her high school graduation, she’s finalized her initial prototype for Sun Goggles, a project she continues pursuing. Hear more from Doyle in the video here.

Shared Hope International Intern Helps Fight Against Sex Trafficking

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Shared Hope International Intern David Kent in front of the White House
David Kent ‘22 interned this term in Washington, D.C., at Shared Hope International, a
nonprofit organization that seeks to prevent sex trafficking while comforting and bringing
justice to victimized women and children.

A Kalamazoo College student is reflecting on an eye-opening internship opportunity that explored a global problem while providing experience that will benefit him in his life after K.

David Kent ‘22, a business and political science double major from Beverly Hills, Michigan, worked in Washington, D.C., at Shared Hope International this term. The nonprofit organization seeks to prevent sex trafficking while comforting and bringing justice to victimized women and children. 

“I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn more about an important issue,” Kent said. “I learned that the practice of sex trafficking is rooted in human civilization. It’s been around as long as people have lived together in societies. It went hand in hand with the institution of slavery. But even now, as slavery is mostly illegal, it persists. I think there is a preconception that it only happens in back alleys and at night. But the reality is there are large operations that work in plain sight and they can sell to people who are well known and very influential. I learned that it can be anybody.” 

Part of Kent’s opportunity was funded by the John Dingell Memorial Scholarship, which provides funds for students from Michigan colleges and universities while they participate in an internship. The internship itself was offered through Shared Hope International’s connection with the Washington Center, a group that unites college students with a variety of nonprofit organizations and other companies in the nation’s capital. 

Kent worked at Shared Hope International as a policy and communications intern, meaning he was responsible for assisting the organization’s legal team with whatever it needed. Its biggest project involved issuing grades and report cards to each state based on its sex-trafficking laws. Kent served as a media relations contact as he connected with news professionals from around the country. 

“It wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but I learned that Michigan is one of the worst states for trafficking with I-94 coming in from Detroit and going on through Chicago, and the state’s connections to Ohio, which is also one of the worst states because of its own highway system,” Kent said. “Michigan certainly has a lot to do in terms of getting laws on the books and enforcing them to better address the situation.” 

In addition to the state report card project, Kent performed individual research on large-scale sex-trafficking operations before presenting to the organization’s staff on it. He also helped the organization prepare for a national conference conducted in Washington, D.C., that brought together activists, nonprofit organizations, policymakers, senators and survivors, while running a breakout session and funneling questions from virtual attendees to presenters. 

Looking back, Kent said he has some ideas for how the world can fight sex trafficking. 

“It starts with individual action,” he said. “Shared Hope International was founded by a former Congresswoman. It started with one person and that’s how we can advocate for such an organization—through one person at a time. These organizations always need volunteers, whether it’s donors contributing supplies or money, or volunteers for activities or shelters. You have to start there and work your way to bigger solutions.” 

CCPD Internships Ease Study Abroad’s Pause

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Stella Young CCPD internships
Stella Young ’22 was one of five juniors to earn internships this fall through the Center for Career and Professional Development as study abroad was put on hold.

Stella Young, a junior political science major, was just one of the Kalamazoo College students who had planned to study abroad during the 2020-21 academic year. When the pandemic threw a wrench into those plans, she was disappointed.

“Study abroad was one of my deciding factors in coming to K,” she said. “I was supposed to go to Madrid for six months.”

Regardless, K’s Center for Career and Professional Development, along with faculty and staff from around campus, provided a thoughtful alternative. Collectively, they developed a series of internships for 20 juniors, including five who worked through CCPD Assistant Director for External Relations Valerie Miller, giving them practical career experience in addition to a credit-granting class.

“I think the students had phenomenal experiences typical of internships,” Miller said. “They didn’t know what to expect and they had some doubts going in. Then they developed some skills and started to understand the work environment better. By the end, each one of them seemed to feel pretty confident about what they accomplished.”

Alumni Connections Critical

According to Miller, alumni were key in setting up the internships her cohort of students wanted. Young, for example, worked with Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization that encourages young adults to participate in the election process, which is led by Carolyn DeWitt ’04.

“I wanted to go on study abroad to meet new people and make new connections,” Young said. “I think I did that with this program.”

Young became a valuable asset to her 15 internship colleagues from across the country as she worked on several projects, including one that helped Iowa voters understand issues and where candidates stood on them in Senate races.

“I hopped on projects as staff members needed help,” she said. “I did a lot of research and data entry leading up to the election, and after, I worked with voters who had questions about results. I knew going into this I wanted to work with a nonprofit and this was an opportunity to put what I’ve been learning in the classroom into action. I hope to stay involved as a volunteer because they’re doing really important work.”

Navigating Health Care

Aramide Apo-Oyin ’22, however, independently found her internship serving heart-failure patients through Aurora Advocate Health in Chicago, via a nonprofit patient-support program offered through its hospital.

“The program is basically a volunteer initiative that helps patients and their families navigate the health care system,” she said, adding she commonly helped patients schedule follow-up care, understand their dietary needs and seek the exercise and activity they needed. “It provides them with the literacy they need, and helps navigate any barriers to their care.”

Apo-Oyin noted the program didn’t necessarily have a specific target audience, but it’s easy to spot trends in the health care system when working with people from many backgrounds.

“So even though we don’t say we’re only helping people who have the fewest resources, we often find they’re the people who need our help the most due to language barriers with their care team in the hospital, being uninsured and not knowing how to enroll into government assistance programs like Medicaid or Medicare, and not having a support system at home to help with transportation to appointments and overall support.”

As a result, the transition support program Apo-Oyin represented commonly assisted people without insurance or those who needed more support than just immediate care.

“We have connections and the relationships that can really help us to assist the communities that need our help. This program is about helping the patients heal and live with their diagnosis. I feel like that happens with more than just the medicine and the procedures doctors do. That’s our role and that’s why I chose to go into it.”

A Happy Ending

In moving forward, both students credited the campus partners for creating programs that tied well with their career goals while developing experiences that made their fall term valuable despite the absence of study abroad.

“I definitely want to use these services more in the future,” Young said of Miller and the CCPD. “She was great in finding a position that I really wanted. I would definitely recommend that people go to the CCPD when they want some off-campus experience—it helped broaden our horizons.”CCP

Environmental Internships Fill in for Study Abroad

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Environmental Internships
Natalie Barber ’22 was among the 20 juniors who missed out on study abroad this fall because of the pandemic. Instead, she worked in one of the environmental internships made available at the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council. In that position, she researched fresh water mussels like these.

Without study abroad available this year, Kalamazoo College faculty and staff got creative and developed a series of internships for 20 juniors who otherwise would’ve spent a term overseas, giving them experience through campus partners such as the Center for International Programs, Center for Career and Professional Development and the Center for Civic Engagement.

An additional group of students, whose interests could be connected with environmental opportunities, worked with the Center for Environmental Stewardship and Director Sara Stockwood.

“I think it’s been a valuable experience for everyone, even if they didn’t go on study abroad,” Stockwood said of the students who worked for organizations such as the Kalamazoo Watershed Council, the Michigan Lakes and Streams Association and Sarett Nature Center.

Michigan Lakes and Streams Association
The Michigan Lakes and Streams Association was one of three local organizations that helped four Kalamazoo College students earn environmental internships this fall.

“The students I’ve talked to said they’ve wanted to get an internship before, they just weren’t sure how to make it fit in their academic plan,” she said. “But when this class came up it fit well and it matched their class schedule. It was a challenge for them to figure out how to work virtually, and some of them felt a little lost at first, yet they gained the skills they needed to figure it out. I think that will help them in their classes and future jobs, especially if they have virtual components.”

Amanda Dow, a biology major, worked with Melissa DeSimone, the executive director of the Michigan Lakes and Streams Association (MLSA), which is a statewide nonprofit that unites individuals; lake, stream and watershed associations; organizations; and corporations that share an interest the preserving inland lakes and streams for generations to come. Her work experience included writing newsletter articles highlighting the organization’s virtual convention this year, contributing to its printed articles, and reformatting and updating several brochures.

“I have a background in writing so this was a good chance for me to practice in different mediums,” Dow said. “I wrote a review of the convention sessions along with a biography of myself for the newsletter. They also come out with a newspaper and the biggest chunk of my internship went to updating and reformatting their brochures. It helped a lot that when I first got there I could choose what I wanted to do.”

Environmental Internships at Asylum Lake
Asylum Lake served as a socially-distanced meeting point for Amanda Dow ’22 and Melissa DeSimone, the executive director of the Michigan Lakes and Streams Association, as Dow served in a virtual internship.

Andrew Wright, a German and biology major, said he felt a little directionless with where he wanted to apply his majors professionally after graduation, until he interned with the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council. The organization aims to protect, preserve and promote the Kalamazoo River and its tributaries for current area residents and future generations.

“Through developing a new interactive digital dashboard with the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council members, my work will help users see the different types of chemical contaminants in the Kalamazoo area and how they affect the types of fish here,” Wright said. “Following the motto of the Watershed, we want to make that information as accessible as possible so people can learn how their communities’ ecosystems have been impacted. The Kalamazoo River has unfortunately suffered its fair share of PCB runoff from paper mills and oil spills, and we want to create ways for people to be knowledgeable and be mindful of how we affect our surrounding environments.”

Natalie Barber, a biology major and psychology minor, joined Wright in working for the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council. She researched fresh water mussels, which filter small organic particles such as bacteria and algae out of lakes and streams, naturally purifying them. Part of that environmental research involved interviewing Daelyn Woolnough, a Central Michigan University biology faculty member and freshwater mussels expert, leading to website content and social media posts for the watershed council.

Asylum Lake
Asylum Lake in Kalamazoo served as a socially-distanced meeting point for Amanda Dow ’22 and her internship supervisor this fall.

With K’s academic schedule, it was important to Barber that she could undertake the internship as a part of her term and she hopes more students at the College will have the same opportunity.

“It’s important we know the effects of global warming and climate change and how they threaten mussels,” Barber said. “We especially have those threats in Kalamazoo because we had the paper mills that put all the PCBs in the water, plus we had the 2010 oil spill. Just knowing about those bigger issues, and also the lesser-known issues like invasive species, which is a big deal to freshwater mussels. Things the general public might not realize are such a big deal like moving boats from lake to lake without cleaning them, that’s important information we should share so we can protect the organisms within our areas. I felt like I was doing something positive toward my career goals. I think these internships should be offered every term because I thought mine was that useful.”

To conclude the class and their environmental internships, each student provided a final visual presentation with screenshots and pictures from their projects. Stockwood said students each had about three minutes to present what they did, what they learned and why it matters.

“They took it very seriously and it was fun because the students didn’t fully know what everybody else was doing,” she said. “They found a lot of similarities in their experiences over time with being lost in the beginning, independently working and having some ownership by the second half of their projects. I hope something like this will continue. It’s important to recognize that it’s not study abroad, but I think the experience was valuable, and I think the students feel it was valuable, too.”

International Internships Offer Global Work in Study Abroad’s Absence

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Three students who had International Internships standing in front of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership
Julia Bienstock (from left), Ella Knight and Addissyn House worked in international internships this term, writing articles for a university’s publication in Spain. One of the articles provided Spanish students with an American view of the Black Lives Matter movement.

When study abroad stayed on pause this fall, Kalamazoo College faculty and staff got creative. In a short period of time, they developed positive, educational experiences for many of the juniors who expected to spend time in another country, showing the strength of the College’s relationships with its external partners.

“Our challenge partly was to identify what students could do to engage with our international partners and folks off campus, but the question was what that would look like,” Center for International Programs Executive Director Margaret Wiedenhoeft said. “It took working with our partners to see what would be possible.”

The solution for this term was a unique set of internships offered through K’s Center for International Programs (CIP), Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD), Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) and Center for Environmental Stewardship (CES). The opportunities were designed quickly as a credit-granting class that provided work experience to 20 juniors, allowing them to build their resumes.

Five of those juniors, in fact, still had a chance to learn about another culture in working at virtual international internships with K partners overseas. Addissyn House, Ella Knight and Julia Bienstock are working with the Universidad de Extremadura in Cáceres, Spain, writing articles on current events from a U.S. perspective; and Reyna Rodriguez and Maricruz Jimenez-Mora are teaching English as a second language to people in San Jose, Costa Rica.

‘The Perfect Internship’

For House, Knight and Bienstock, this meant working virtually on a weekly basis with Gemma Delicado, an associate dean and study abroad director, on producing articles for the December issue of Vice Versa, a publication from the Universidad de Extremadura Humanities College, similar to an academic journal.

“A lot of students come to K because of study abroad,” Bienstock said. “It’s a big part of the K-Plan. It was disappointing not to study abroad. However, getting this internship opportunity was a positive thing because we’re going to have to navigate this pandemic for a while, which made the experience really powerful.”

Wiedenhoeft compared their experience to a virtual version of the integrated cultural research project (ICRP) that students would normally write while reflecting on their study abroad experience. House described it as the perfect internship for her.

“My goal was to immerse myself in Spanish, which was what I intended to do on study abroad, and I think we’ve done that to the best of our abilities,” House said. “We’re learning to read and write Spanish at a different level than what we could in school. It’s especially different because we’re online and collaborating a lot more. We can see where Gemma’s making edits, and she can explain why she makes them. I didn’t know that would come out of this experience.”

The topics the students write about include current events such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the U.S. presidential election, and the virtual format helps them understand such events from a Spanish perspective. The takeaway remains a cultural immersion that most interns elsewhere will never receive.

“It was disappointing not to study abroad, but this has been enriching in other ways,” Knight said. “It shows that no matter what happens, there’s hope that another opportunity will come along. I hadn’t written articles like this before for a Spanish audience and I’m learning new ways to talk about and teach culture.”

‘I See Myself in These Students’

For Rodriguez and Jimenez-Mora, an international internship meant teaching English to Costa Rican high school students.

K’s study abroad program has connections to Skills for Life, a Costa Rican government initiative targeting bilingualism among citizens for the sake of higher education and better employment. Within that program, Project Boomerang—a reference to volunteers giving back—helps high school students expand their English skills.

Rodriguez was excited for her chance to volunteer through her internship because she struggled to learn English as a child after moving to the Chicago area from Mexico.

“I came home crying because I couldn’t understand my teacher because she seemed to be speaking English so fast,” she said. “I see myself in these students. I know if they’re passionate enough, they’ll be able to succeed. I love the concept of the program because it means I’m giving back.”

Rodriguez typically teaches virtual classes of one to six students three times a week. The students have studied English for at least four years and can read it and write it well. Some even study additional languages. The program, though, provides the students with a stipend as they build their conversation skills on topics such as ice breakers, feelings, cuisine, culture and traditions.

Her fellow volunteers are from countries such as Korea, Brazil and the Netherlands. They all know at least some Spanish, and she and Jimenez-Mora speak it fluently.

“I think students really appreciate that we can speak Spanish because they’re able to ask questions in Spanish if necessary,” she said. “English can be difficult. The context you use and the conjugation can sometimes trip them up.”

Rodriguez has prior experience with teaching as a third-grade language arts assistant at El Sol Elementary in Kalamazoo through CCE. She doesn’t expect to pursue teaching professionally, although the internship has helped her build other job-related skills and she’s grateful for them.

“When I was a little girl, I always wanted to be a teacher,” she said. “As I’ve seen it growing up, teaching has been a passion. I don’t think it will be a career path, but this helps me see it will be something I pursue in my own time. Professionally, I’ve been able to communicate better with people just by learning how to say things differently. My time management has improved, and I think my creativity has improved as I’ve made my lesson plans and shifted them from elementary to high school students.”

Setbacks Create Opportunities

Although less than ideal with the pandemic, these opportunities have shown that K can channel its relationships abroad to create further opportunities for these students and others.

“It was our relationships with our international partners that really factored into our ability to develop this programming for students,” Wiedenhoeft said. “We try very seriously to nurture these relationships and these internships are the fruit of that. I think these students have demonstrated an ability to adapt to ambiguity and manage understanding how expectations can change, and can change based on a cultural perspective.”

Minnesota City Counts on K Student’s Election Internship

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Kaitlyn Dexter Duluth Election Internship
Kaitlyn Dexter ’22 served the City of Duluth in Minnesota as an intern who assisted with presidential election-related jobs, enabling thousands to vote.

Kaitlyn Dexter ’22 has fond childhood memories of going to the polls with her dad on past election days in Duluth, Minnesota. She would even get a chance to fill out a children’s sample ballot and receive an “I voted” sticker.

“Voting was always a normal thing to me,” she said. “Then I remember having our first Black president. That was a big deal to me even though I was only about 8 years old. Then we had a woman on a major ticket. These were important steps that developed my interest in politics.”

Fast forward to 2020 and Dexter, a junior at Kalamazoo College, continues building on that interest while empowering others to vote. She’s a political science major and worked this term as a virtual engagement assistant for K Votes, a non-partisan coalition that informs students, faculty and staff about participating in elections. Also, in prior years, she was a volunteer for K Votes.

Dexter credits people such as Emily Kowey ’17, who oversees K Votes for the College’s Center for Civic Engagement, and her fellow students for boosting voter participation at K.

“We know that voting is not the only way to get things done but it is a really important way,” Dexter said. “I think that we’ve done a good job making it more accessible, especially for students.”

As a result, when Dexter set her sights on securing an internship recently, she approached the City of Duluth about possible roles she could play related to the presidential election.

“When I talked to them, they didn’t have an internship set up, and they weren’t sure they wanted to take the time to do so,” Dexter said. “Then, the pandemic hit.”

The pandemic left Duluth, a city of more than 85,000 people and about 50,000 registered voters, with no doubt that it would need help managing requests for absentee ballots and handling the ballots themselves. Plus, Dexter knew she would be in her hometown as absentee ballots were received and on November 3 for the general election with the fall term at K being virtual.

Dexter and Duluth city officials sensed an opportunity.

“I think they saw that it would be helpful for them to have another person and then helpful for me to have firsthand experience,” Dexter said.

Ultimately, Dexter spent six to seven hours a day sending out thousands of packets that allowed registered voters to apply for an absentee ballot. After Duluth received about 26,000 absentee ballot requests, she helped respond to the demand by mailing the ballots themselves. Receiving them back involved checking numbers and signatures on personal identification envelopes.

Two weeks before the election, Minnesota officials could start counting ballots. At that time and through Election Day, Dexter helped open the ballots and send them to the St. Louis County Courthouse, where votes officially were counted. This made her an important part of the 2020 presidential election for the people of her hometown. Now, as states certify their election results, remember the village of employees and volunteers—including Dexter—who braved the pandemic’s dangers to ensure each vote would be counted.

“When the pandemic hit, I didn’t want to put myself at risk, but I wanted to do as much as I could to help,” Dexter said. “I knew that at City Hall they would have COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing, so this was a way to safely help. It was the best way that I could make a difference.

“Voting is an avenue we have to make things better in society. It was exciting to see the inside of what goes on in the government at the local level and witness the process.”

K Athlete Flexes Liberal Arts Muscle in NBA Internship

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For Amanda Moss ’19, the route to her prestigious internship this summer at National Basketball Association (NBA) headquarters in New York City began, improbably, with getting kicked out of a gym.

Amanda Moss Attending NBA Draft through her NBA Internship
Economics and business major Amanda Moss applied for a highly competitive NBA internship and was one of 50 students chosen from a pool of 6,000.

She says that while she was a basketball player in high school, she went to the community gym in her Detroit suburb daily during the summer to practice her jump shot. One day, however, an employee of the Detroit Pistons NBA team told her she would have to leave because the courts were reserved for a team-run youth basketball program.

“I started to pack up but then I looked around and saw they were way understaffed for the event they were going to hold,” she recalls. “So I went back up to the guy and I offered my assistance. He took me up on the offer and I helped set up chairs, run the scoreboard, that sort of thing, and helped to clean up when it was over.”

After the event, she says, the employee chatted with her and ended up offering her a summer job at the Pistons’ youth basketball camp.

Amanda Moss Playing Basketball NBA Internship
Amanda Moss, who plays on Kalamazoo College’s women’s basketball team, is working in an NBA internship this summer.

“I did that every summer for four years,” says Moss, who plays women’s basketball and lacrosse and was just named to the Jewish Sports Review Women’s College Lacrosse All-America Team for the second year in a row.

Along the way, she got to meet Pistons players including Andre Drummond and Reggie Jackson and people in the team’s corporate office. So when it came time to seek an internship in summer 2017, she was well-situated to apply to the Pistons. She worked in community relations and marketing for the team, conceiving a career forum for girls 9 to 16 and then running every aspect of the event, which included presenting a panel of college basketball players and women business leaders.

That, in turn, set her up for this summer’s internship. With the help of K’s Center for Career and Professional Development and with advice from her professors, the economics and business major applied for the highly competitive program and was one of 50 students chosen from a pool of 6,000. She’s working in the retail division of the NBA’s Global Partnerships Department, which manages all aspects of the league’s relationship with companies including Nike, New Era, Foot Locker and Amazon.

That relationship includes activities such as licensing the sale of NBA-branded merchandise, arranging for advertising on NBA TV, approving the use of the NBA logo in social media messages and arranging player appearances at partner businesses, she says. Her role has been mainly in research. One assignment tasked her with finding out everything she could about how the NBA could work with Target Corp., and she says she discovered a natural fit in both organizations’ emphasis on supporting community voluntarism—a synergy around which her boss now is building a partnership program.

She says her K education has given her a real advantage in her role, especially a business research methods course that prepares students for their Senior Individualized Project (SIP). Business and economics professor Timothy Moffit ’80 put a heavy emphasis on identifying information sources in research papers, so in a PowerPoint presentation to NBA professionals, she says, she included a final slide listing all of her sources—about 30, and many of them recognizable names.

She says it helped cement the credibility and validity of her proposal. “They were really impressed. It’s not something that they were expecting.”

A Chinese minor who studied abroad in China during the 2017-18 school year, Moss also has had a chance to use her language skills, aiding her boss in a conference call with the NBA office in China, she says. And content- and video-editing skills she learned in a documentary filmmaking course have turned out to be in high demand, as well.

“Every day is a new day at the league,” she says. “You have to be very multidimensional. Part of the Kalamazoo College liberal arts experience is being able to study multiple subjects because the K-Plan is so flexible.”

With the experience gained in her internships, and a planned SIP contrasting consumer perceptions of professional sports in the United States and China, she hopes to land a corporate job in international sports after graduation. Her ultimate goal—“really just a dream” at this point, she says—would be to start a nonprofit venture that uses sports to connect with and empower Chinese girls.

“I was adopted from China, and when I went to my study abroad in China, I got to volunteer coach in some of the schools, and there was a huge absence of girls in all of the basketball programs,” she says, adding that Chinese girls get little encouragement to participate in team sports in general.

In another effort to help people achieve their goals, she is teaming with fellow Kalamazoo College athletes Alex Dupree ’21 and Jordan Wiley ’19 to form a sports business club for K students that will aid them in charting their way to careers in sports-oriented businesses and link them with alumni in the field.

Her effort to create what she calls “new channels and opportunities” for her classmates echoes what she says is her goal on the lacrosse field and basketball court: “to play for my teammates and make great memories.”

Moss’ enthusiasm and cooperative yet competitive spirit wins high praise from K physical education professor and coach Jeanne Hess.

“Amanda is one of the most committed players and teammates I’ve seen come through Kalamazoo College,” Hess says. “She plays with passion and ferocity and she’s fun to watch. She’s going to do great things.”