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Internships Offer Benefits for Students AND Organizations

They are tiny, they jump around like fleas in the water, and they are so sensitive to toxins that researchers value them as modern-day "canaries in the coal mine." Water fleas, which are really freshwater crustaceans, are ideal organisms for evaluating the quality of waste water.

Duke Power, headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., uses the crustaceans to test water effluent from its power plants. At the company's Environmental Laboratory in Huntersville, N.C., researchers culture Ceriodaphnia dubia in water from Lake Norman. But during recent summers, in June and July, they began to have a problem keeping the water fleas alive and producing during those two months.

When Stephanie Kern MEM 2002 joined the Duke Power staff this summer as a Nicholas School intern, it became her job to investigate why this might be happening.

"They didn't expect me to solve the problem, but if I could eliminate a few possibilities, they would be happy," said Kern, who is in the Nicholas School's Environmental Toxicology program. In exchange for helping researchers get a head start on a tough problem, Kern received a real-world, hands-on lab experience that she can use as her master's project, and she helped forward a partnership that began in 1994.

Duke Power came to Duke University at that time to talk with Nicholas School founding dean Norman L. Christensen about partnering with the school to give two to three students a year an opportunity to do applied research with the company during the summer, said Gene Vaughan, senior scientist for Duke Power.

"The operative word here is 'applied.' We don't have the time, money or energy to do research that isn't directly applicable to some facet of the operation of Duke Power, and as a result, all of the students' work is not only designed to address an issue, but also is shared with other scientsts through brochures, and manuscripts published in referred journals," Vaughan said. "We more than get our money's worth out of the program, and feel like the students would say they had a challenging and productive summer."

The internship program with Duke Power is only one of several partnerships that the Nicholas School has formed with companies, government agencies and non-profit organizations for the mutual benefit of the students and the partnering organizations, said Karen Kirchof, director of the Nicholas School's Career Services. "Over the past 10 years, 98 percent of our students have completed internships."

In addition to Duke Power, the Nicholas School has worked with The Home Depot and International Paper, and a whole host of non-profit organizations and government agencies through the Stanback Conservation Internship Program (see related story, Page 26) and the Doris Duke Conservation Fellowships.

Naomi Tsurumi MEM 2002, who is in the Nicholas School's Water and Air Resources program, spent the summer as a Stanback intern with North Carolina Environmental Defense in Raleigh. She scoped out a situation in Union County that involves a federally endangered mussel - the Carolina heelsplitter - that is being threatened by impending development.

The Stanback internships, supported by Fred J. and Alice Stanback of Salisbury, N.C., have placed 162 interns at conservation organizations since 1995.

As a large non-profit organization, North Carolina Environmental Defense does have some resources to hire interns, but its program would be severely limited without the Stanback internships and other cooperative efforts with the Nicholas School, said Dan Whittle, senior attorney with Environmental Defense.

"We've very much institutionalized the Stanback program into our year. We count on getting the sophisticated, talented pool of students," he said.

Environmental Defense hires two to four student interns a year to work on projects on timely issues related to water and air quality, marine fisheries and forestry. "We try to make it rewarding for them and for us," he said.

Neither Kern nor Tsurumi actually solved a problem this summer, but what they did was to make a difference for themselves, their organizations and the environment.

Rainfall in the Lake Norman region was more frequent and plentiful this summer, the absence of which may have played a key role in the past two years in diminishing Duke Power's water flea population. So, Kern didn't have the actual crisis to study. But what she did was to apply various purification techniques to lake water to develop a plan of action that Duke Power might follow in the event that the crisis should happen again.

Although, she might not have "saved the day" as she would have liked, her Duke Power mentor, John Velte, manager of biomonitoring and bacteriology, thought the project was very successful, and had high praise for Kern. "She's pretty exceptional, but we knew that when we selected her."

Tsurumi spent hours examining the Environmental Impact Statement on a water reclamation project in Union County that could have an effect on an endangered mussel. Her work involved numerous interviews and a report that Environmental Defense can eventually use to determine if the issue is one they need to tackle.

Duke Power's Velte lauds the importance of internships like Kern's and Tsurumi's for students. "I've been working for 20 years now, but I was fortunate to be steered into a co-op opportunity when I was a student that I think made a difference in getting the job I have now," said Velte. "Co-oping is key. There aren't many things a student can do to help themselves more than take advantage of opportunities like these."