It’s the time of year when students take on internships, fellowships, and summer jobs that ask them to apply the work they do in the classroom to a different context and new challenges.

Experiences outside the classroom show students how a liberal arts education will serve them in any number of diverse settings. And, of course, students know that internships are the single best way to build a network that will launch them into careers as challenging, engaging, and meaningful as their education.

Bard College at Simon’s Rock encourages students to pursue internships throughout their time at the College. The Win Student Resource Commons keeps students updated on new opportunities and helps them develop applications and resumes.

Many students are drawn to the College because they can design their own individualized program, and many pursue outside opportunities that are fittingly unique. From publishing to farming, the roles are as varied as the students. Here’s what some undergrads are doing this summer:

Arts and media

• Jake Levy ’08 is an editorial intern at Flaunt Magazine, an independent fashion and design publication based in Los Angeles.
• Claudia Berger ’08 is creating animations at Glass Eye Pix, an indie film studio and production company in New York City.
• Savannah Lamb ’09 helped produce the Berkshire International Film Festival.
• Multiple students from the Arts Division will be serving in critical roles at the Berkshire Fringe.
• Hillary Saviello ’09 is chronicling red carpet events as an editorial intern at M Magazine.
• Rachel Feltman is at Random House in the Ben Stern Memorial Internship offered to rising Simon’s Rock seniors. There, she reviews manuscripts and works in publicity at Pantheon, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
• Perri Brierley-Bowers ’08 spent the summer in Japan where she interned in the Tokyo office of Stars and Stripes, the the U.S Military newspaper.

Research with Simon’s Rock professors

• Halley Oller ’09 is studying the fishes of the Hudson River with Bob Schmidt.
• Aneequa Muzammil ’10 and Zachary Mason ’09 are researching the solidification and deformation of alloys with Mike Bergman.
• Tom Meyer ’07 and Charlie Powell ’09 are studying plant hormone transport with Eric Kramer.
• William Deng ’09, a participant in the 3-2 Columbia University Engineering Signature program, will be working with chemistry professor David Myers.
• Joelle Chevrier ’09, Maeve Dwyer ’08, and Michael Xu ’08 are travelling to China with Chris Coggins to study the history, culture, and ecology of feng shui forests.

Applying the Social Sciences

• Samad Sadri ’08 is participating in the Bard Globalization and International Affairs program in New York City, interning at a new grassroots organization, the Afghanistan Blind Women and Children Foundation.
• Lauren Dahlin ’08 will be conducting research with the Tulane Research Experience for Undergraduates in Applied Microeconomics and Program Evaluation.
• Michelle Gonzalez ’08 is working for Paradigm Shift NYC, a feminist organization that does community outreach and event organizing.
• Gina Peters ’09 is interning in the immigration and foreign affairs department at the New York office of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Agriculture

• M.J. Heise ’09 will put down roots for the season at Cerridwen Farm at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont. She’s participating in a program that educates student-farmers in the techniques of sustainable agriculture.
• Max Ehrman-Shapiro ’08 and Arantzazu Galdos ’09 have travelled to Germany to work on a small organic farm there. Ehrman-Shapiro is an environmental studies major and Galdos, who spent the last semester studying abroad in Germany, will continue to immerse herself in the language.
• Michael Rogove ’09 is a full-time paid intern at the Student Sustainable Farm at Rutgers University, the largest school-sanctioned, completely student-run CSA in the country. He’s in charge of the weekly newsletter, which is aimed at informing shareholders ranging from divisional professors and deans to their grandchildren.

Science and medicine

• Marne Garretson ’10 is at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse
• Raspberry Simpson ’08 is at MIT researching neutrinos, an elementary particle.
• Michael Xu will travel to the Hannover Medical School in Germany to research how different proteins play a role in the efficacy of various drugs.
• Nico Hernandez ’08 is a fellow at the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences, doing research on sea grass with a doctoral student in marine biology.
• Patricia Sendao ’10 is returning to her hometown to intern at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies.
• Kevin Donaher ’07 will be at the University of Pennsylvania, working to develop nanopores that can help to electronically sequence DNA.