One of many proud moments at the Borromini Institute over the course of the semester is our Internship Symposium, the concluding capstone for those students who enroll in our Academic Internship program.
Since our students complete their internships for the most part independently of one another at their respective internship sites, this concluding Symposium is a unique opportunity for them to come together and share the incredible work they’ve completed over the past weeks.
An integral part of the Borromini Institute’s Academic Internship program are not only the tasks that students complete while at their placements, but also the independent research project or portfolio they complete as for the academic complement to their internship. In collaboration with our Learning Facilitator, students have the creative liberty to dive into any topic of their choosing (so long as it complements an aspect of their internship experience).
Of the eight students who elected to complete an internship this summer, we learned about topics as varied as comparing the dairy production of cows and buffaloes, different regulations in environmental consulting between the U.S. and E.U., and how to create greater accessibility in social media content creation for neurodivergent people. The sheer variety of the topics discussed at this summer’s Symposium is itself a testament to the unique skills and experiences that our students will carry forward into their growing professional careers. And in the end, one of our participating students, Isra Shaikh studying at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, put it best when she wrote that a highlight of her internship experience was “presenting my findings to everyone in a more professional manner and seeing what everyone else had been up to in more detail. It was such a great place to grow through the people I met and the material I created!”
You can check out additional footage from our Summer 2023 Internship Symposium here on our Instagram:
