As students navigate their way through the higher education system, most seek to enrich their curricular experience with internships, externships and similar programs. This summer, the Sustainability Institute (SI) at Ohio State sponsored two students’ summer internships with the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC). Delaney Horton and Derek Holston, third- and fourth-year students at the university respectively, worked as local government interns, learning about the intricacies of Ohio policy implementation. Each intern collaborated with a community partner to maximize their impact locally.
MORPC placed Horton within the parks department of the Village of Buckeye Lake, focusing on grant writing.
“I was mostly researching grants for the village to apply for as a whole, and I specifically wrote out a grant through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR). There were also some smaller projects, like researching plant species for road medians we were developing,” Horton explained.
As an Environment, Economy, Development, and Sustainability major with an architecture minor, Horton wants to attend graduate school for landscape architecture and become an accredited architect working within the sustainability field. The internship taught her skills useful for this career path.
“I had literally no idea about the grant writing process before this internship, which is definitely important because so many grants are sustainability related. From a personal perspective, it was my first experience in a formal office setting and understanding the dynamics of working with others in that scenario,” she added.
Holston, a history major with an environmental science and tech specialization, spent his time working with the Licking County Soil and Water Conservation District. By conducting research on the history of sustainable agriculture, its rise after the dust bowl in Licking County, site inspection and flood water management, he was able to round out his knowledge of the soil and water and conservation.
“The biggest thing I got out of the internship was learning the fundamentals of GIS because that’s a must for pretty much anything in the environmental sector,” Holston said. “The summer exposed me to different possibilities of what you can do with a soil and water background, and a lot of it was stuff you normally don’t hear about, like storm water management.”
Both Horton and Holston agreed that the internships added value to their extracurricular experience. Beyond their time with MORPC, Horton is involved with AROUSE, the Ohio State radio station, and works as a climbing instructor at an outdoor recreation facility. Holston balances his schoolwork with his time at the Waterman Lab conducting research in the turf grass facility.
“The overall experience was very impactful, and I’m proud that I was able to start and finish a project independently,” Horton said. Holston agreed that summer was “empowering and reaffirming.”
Through funding and assistance in candidate selection, SI supported these internships and the student growing experiences that resulted. A substantial need for this kind of help has developed recently, especially in MORPC’s 2050 communities, so the partnership benefited all involved.
"There are so many good things about co-curricular learning experiences such as these internships,” said Gina Jaquet, director of Sustainability Education and Learning at SI. “These opportunities allow students to network with different people and work as a team of interns alongside peers, which really gives them a taste of the real world. They also provide an experience where students can test out skills from their classroom learning and reflect on the results curricular education while demonstrating to potential employers their ability to manage multiple projects and types of involvement at the same time."
SI is proud to be able to support such opportunities through funding, internships, the SUSTAINS Learning Community, and programs throughout the year designed to create forums for education and connection with peers. For more information about upcoming events, visit our webpage.
Learn more about the two MORPC summer internship student projects: Delaney Horton and Derek Holston
Learn more about MORPC and its regional sustainability work
Story by Aurora Ellis, student communication assistant