Dalton State Biology Major Jacob Southern serves as a summer intern at the Cohutta Fisheries Center where he works with endangered Russian sturgeon.
Several Dalton State students are exploring possible career paths with summer internships in town and beyond. A love of nature has sent two Dalton State biology majors to the great outdoors for the summer while others are working in traditional office settings and one in a newsroom.
Allyson Boldon has accepted an internship with the Gulf Islands National Seashore in Pensacola, Florida, where she is stationed for 12 weeks. In her time there, she will work in the Resource Education Division on various duties such as staffing the visitor centers, assisting with education programs, leading tours, trail walks, and other programs, and conducting public programs such as beach walks.
“Allyson loves the outdoors so much that, in fact, she has already interned for the Park Service once before and currently works for the State of Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources,” says Dr. David DesRochers, Assistant Professor of Biology. Boldon recently traveled to New York City to attend the National Park Service Academy in collaboration with the Student Conservation Association.
Jacob Southern is spending his second summer assisting at the Cohutta Fisheries Center, which is managed by the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. Previously, his work there has involved managing a population of endangered Russian sturgeon.
“Jacob has taken a great interest in fisheries management and has shown a lot of enthusiasm in pursuing it as a career,” says Dr. DesRochers. “It’s great to see students like Jacob and Allyson develop professionally and to pursue what they love.”
Communication Studies student Tanner Blackton will complete a 12-week internship with The Daily Citizen where she prepares the weekly “Citizen of the Week” editorial, compiles online news stories for the paper’s daily “In Other News” feature, and writes feature stories and personality profiles as assigned
“We believe it's important to introduce as many young people as possible to journalism since they are the future of our industry," says Jamie Jones, Managing Editor of The Daily Citizen. "Tanner had a strong interest in newspapers and a background in writing, and we thought she was a perfect fit for us. Dalton State has plenty of bright students, and we are looking forward to continuing our relationship with the College.”
The ‘Business in Action’ internship program provides business students opportunities for career exploration, experience, and development of professional skills,” says Eunice Cooper, Internship Coordinator for the School of Business.
Kelsey Harmon is spending the summer as a Marketing Intern for Dan Combs Insurance Agency; Danielle Carroll is a Management Intern for the Alzheimer’s Association, and Robbie Cooper serves Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance and Financial Services as a Management Intern.
Cassie Cochran is completing her second full term as a co-op student at Shaw Industries where she works with the Corporate Sales Administration Group. In her time at Shaw, Cochran has created a series of high-security, internal web pages for executives, directors, and sales teams.
This summer, she will work on refining and debugging those web pages, creating new pages requested by Shaw users, developing user and maintenance guides, and innovating new techniques to simplify and improve the pages.
Alisha Smith is interning with the Andersen Company where she works reorganizing spreadsheets for easier customer contact, creating product videos, working on a continuous video of the current expansion of the company, and monitoring the company’s social media.
Smith will complete a social media marketing plan throughout her internship and present it to the Andersen Company at the end of the summer.
“We are very excited to have five active internships for our summer semester,” says Cooper. “A big ‘thank you’ to our business partners from the School of Business at Dalton State.”