Emma Fort: Making an IMPACT

Indiana INTERNnet celebrated internship excellence on February 7, 2018 at the 12^th Annual IMPACT Awards Luncheon. Though the event is over and the winners have been announced, we are continuing to celebrate the nominees’ successes.

These are their stories

Emma Fort is a recent graduate at IUPUI double majoring in Biology and Forensic & Investigative Science. She completed an internship with The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

Indiana INTERNnet: Describe your experience with The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (TCM). What were your favorite aspects?

Emma Fort: I interned with The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis in the STEMLab and SciencePort area as a science programs intern, where I designed a program to teach kids about medical diagnostic testing. Easily one of my favorite aspects was the wonderful people I got to meet and work with during my time at The Museum. In addition, I loved how much freedom I had on the project to work on my own while also being able to go to my mentor at any point and bounce ideas off him.

IIN: Describe how you helped the team develop such a successful program. Did you encounter any obstacles?

EF: I helped to create a successful program by spending lots of time doing research and running ideas past others and getting their feedback. Constantly talking with my mentor and others in the science programs area really helped me to think through every aspect of my project and make it successful. There were obstacles along the way, such a trying to put the focus on learning about the different types of testing and keeping focus of us the diseases we used as examples in the program. Not to mention when I first started project, we weren’t entirely sure what disclaimer we’d have to add to everything or if The Museum would even approve of the medical theme at all (they did thankfully!).

IIN: Why did you choose to complete this internship with TCM?

EF: This was my first internship. I decided to pursue it after searching the web for local internships that could be relevant to my degree and happened upon this one with TCM. I’ve loved The Museum since I was a little girl, not to mention that practicing how to teach science to kids will be helpful with my future career when trying to explain complicated science while on the stand. The experience of an internship was something I knew would be able to learn from and really influence my skills coming out of college.

IIN: Why are internships important?

EF: Personally, I think internships are important because they give you valuable real-life experience. Classroom learning is valuable but going into the work force with some experience such as an internship really sets you apart from the next person.

Below are photos provided by Emma from her time at TCM:

This is me on my last day interning out in the STEMLab.

These are two of the stations with my project.

And this is just a silly picture a friend took of me when I came back to visit after my internship was over and saw that my project had all its official marketing done.