This piece is the second in a four-part series about Wellesley-funded summer internships offered through the College’s Lulu Chow Wang ’66 Center for Career Education. These eight- to 10-week placements are available across the United States and all over the world, and they count toward the experiential learning element Wellesley recently added to its degree requirements. In summer 2024, Wellesley provided internship funding for 285 students thanks to funds from alumnae and organizations that allow the College to distribute approximately $1.5 million annually through internship grants and program placements.
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As Dova Koretsky ’26 was looking through the long list of Wellesley-funded summer internships, she came across a placement at the Health Wagon in Wise, Va. She Googled the nonprofit to learn more and found a 2014 60 Minutes segment about the organization. Watching it, Koretsky was inspired by the work of the nurse practitioners at the Health Wagon, who bring medical care—via a Winnebago—to communities in rural Appalachia.
“Seeing Dr. Teresa and Dr. Paula, and how much their hearts were in their work and how much they cared—that was truly moving for me,” says Koretsky, a chemistry major. She knew immediately she wanted to intern at the Health Wagon: “I was so in awe of them, and then this summer I got to see them almost every single day in the office.”
Aleah Litton ’26, a neuroscience major, was also drawn to the Health Wagon this summer, but for a different reason: Litton is from Wise. “I come from an area that the majority of Wellesley students have never heard of,” she says. When she attended a Career Education session about the Wellesley-funded internships and heard one was offered in her hometown, she gasped.
Growing up in southwest Virginia, she knew of the great work the Health Wagon had been doing for her community, and that familiarity has been both the most enjoyable and the most challenging aspect of her internship. “It’s very near and dear to my heart to help these people, because they’re my friends and my neighbors, and even my family members, and, at the same time, it was so difficult to see [them] not getting the care that they need,” says Litton. She adds that working at the Health Wagon gave her “hope that there’s still some way we can help the people in this area.”
Doing hands-on work through a summer internship is an excellent way for students to learn about the realities of a field they may want to pursue post-Wellesley. “We have opportunities for everyone, no matter what they are interested in,” says Jen Pollard, Lulu Chow Wang ’66 Executive Director and Associate Provost of Career Education. In particular, Wellesley offers a large portfolio of biomedical research and health internships, like the one with the Health Wagon, as biology has become the most popular major at Wellesley. In a typical year, over 50 Wellesley students and alums apply to medical school, and many more go on to other health- and medicine-related areas.
Caroline Barry ’25 and Misheel Amarsanaa ’25, both biology majors, interned at the Walensky Lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute this summer. “This was a very valuable experience for someone who is trying to get into research,” says Amarsanaa, who worked with a postdoc researching a protein that plays a key role in apoptosis. Barry worked with another postdoc, producing stapled antimicrobial peptides.
“Dana-Farber has a lot of really great resources and opportunities,” says Barry. “I had the chance to work with a lot of very cool machines and learned a bunch of different techniques that I wouldn’t normally be exposed to. For example, I got to work with a very large confocal microscope at Harvard Medical School and also a flow cytometer.”
Barry says that when applying for a lab internship it’s important to talk to former interns if possible, because “every lab is run differently … maybe you want a lab that’s more hands-on with someone guiding you, but there are also labs that give you a lot more independence.”
Amarsanaa and Barry appreciated the independence their postdoc supervisors gave them with their research, but they also enjoyed all they learned from the Walensky Lab team. “The lab is just full of really amazing people,” says Amarsanaa. “They’re all very nice and sweet, and they love teaching us undergrads who don’t really know much about what’s going on at first.”
Like the other lab members, Barry and Amarsanaa attended weekly meetings where people presented their research to the group. They were scared and excited to give their own presentations at the end of their internships, which really made them feel like part of the team.
“Doing an internship is such a good opportunity for students to develop their skills and workplace confidence,” says Lorraine Hanley ’98, director of internships in the Career Education department.
Marissa Handler ’26, a neuroscience major, spent the summer at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. She interviewed patients with Parkinson’s disease who have been part of an ongoing trial.
“The hardest part at first was making that initial connection, because some of them had been in the trial for longer than I’d been there,” says Handler. Eventually, she was able to connect with the patients. “I loved interacting with those guys!” she says. “They’re all veterans, because it is the VA hospital, so they’re mostly older men, and they’re all super sweet … They were so open to talking about their experiences, their lives. I know one just bought a new tractor. I don’t know what to do with that, but he’s very excited about it.”
Thanks to her time at the VA Medical Center, Handler says she now knows what she wants to do after Wellesley: “I think I want to go into clinical research. I really like having that relationship with people and being able to see their progress as we go through the trials.”
Trying new experiences and surprising yourself is what summer placements are all about. They’re also a good way to see what it’s like to live in a new place. Koretsky had never been to southwest Virginia before interning at the Health Wagon. “I was really a stranger to the area, and that can feel really scary,” she says. But she did some research beforehand—an avid runner, she looked on Google Maps for routes and trails, plus she figured out the closest grocery store to her apartment—and Litton took Koretsky under her wing, happy to share her hometown with her.
“I felt so fortunate to have Aleah, but also, never let a destination keep you from doing something that you want to do,” says Koretsky. “I just had a feeling from watching the 60 Minutes video that this was going to be right for me. I definitely was a little bit nervous going into it, but sometimes you have to step out of your comfort zone to find growth. … So go try out that new place. It will welcome you.”
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The next application cycle for Wellesley-funded internships is from October 1 to November 1, 2024.
To read the first piece in the Wellesley-funded summer internship series, click here.