Alumnus Mentors Junior Intern at Penn Museum After transferring to Susquehanna from a Maryland college, Julianna Whalen knew she wanted to minor in museum studies to complement her major in communication studies. Zachary Clinchy '18 at his summer internship in Australia, an opportunity he found through Lindsay Simoncavage '09.
Chance Alumni Connection Lands Senior an Australian Internship
“I’ve always been interested in museums,” she says. “I went to museum camp at the Reading Public Museum when I was little. On family vacations, we always went to at least one museum.” A junior from Shillington, Pa., Whalen experienced a museum from behind the scenes this summer when she did an internship at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, known as the Penn Museum. She secured the opportunity with the help of Tom Stanley ’07, whom she met at Break Through, Susquehanna’s annual student-alumni networking conference.
When senior Zachary Clinchy, of Macungie, Pa., arrived in Australia for his semester-long Global Opportunities (GO) experience, he and his classmates used iVenture cards to experience some of the tourist attractions around Sydney. iVenture Card International provides travelers with flexible, prepaid destination attraction passes to make international sightseeing more convenient. Curious if the company, which is based in Sydney, had any internship opportunities, Clinchy did some research and discovered a Susquehanna alumna within iVenture’s ranks.
“During my own undergraduate career at SU, I did not seek out any internship opportunities—which, in retrospect, was a mistake,” Stanley says.
Lindsay Simoncavage ’09 also traveled to Australia for her GO experience and ended up making the country her home.
“Julianna approached me after a panel discussion at Break Through. I was impressed with her initiative. Her résumé was icing on the cake; she’s a communications major with minors in anthropology and museum studies—a combination of emphases that could not possibly be a better fit for an internship in my office.”
“I contacted Lindsay, introduced myself, and after a series of interviews with her and the group executive director of marketing, I secured my internship,” says the strategic communications major. At iVenture, Clinchy’s responsibilities included revamping website content, creating blog posts about destinations and developing content for social media and promotional purposes. He also interned with Indago Digital, which handles digital marketing for iVenture. At Indago Digital, Clinchy wrote search engine-optimized (SEO) copy for iVenture’s tourist guides. An avid outdoorsman, Clinchy hopes to land a marketing or advertising job with an outfitter in the outdoor industry. “My internship with iVenture and Indago were amazing experiences,” Clinchy says. “It gave me a better understanding of the marketing industry and how those within the industry work.”
During the internship, Whalen’s primary focus was Penn Museum’s social media platforms, for which she wrote posts for Facebook and Twitter, and took photographs and prepared posts for Instagram under the close mentorship of Stanley. It was an eye-opening experience for her. “It’s so rewarding to see the posts on the museum’s social media pages and to know that I helped to create that,” she says. “You encounter social media in daily life, but working with Tom has taught me so much more about the strategy behind it.” When she wasn’t working directly with Stanley, Whalen participated in the museum’s summer lectureship program, learning about topics such as object conservation, archival record-keeping and public programming.
fa l l 2 01 7 · Susquehanna Currents · 23