By Tara Monastesse ’25
Staff Writer
Mount Holyoke College’s 2021 Learning from Application (LEAP) Symposium took place on Friday, Oct. 22, featuring presentations from over 150 students recounting their summer internships. Emerging from a completely virtual format in 2020, this year’s program was presented in a hybrid format that included 28 in-person panels and 14 panels exclusive to Zoom. The presentations took place over four sessions and were open to all members of the Mount Holyoke community, with in-person panels hosted in classrooms throughout the Science Center.
The Symposium is the final product of a course entitled “Reflecting Back: Connecting Internship and Research to Your Liberal Arts Education,” which runs for half a semester and grants two credits. While open to all students, completion of the course is required for all students completing a Nexus program and is a way for students who received funding through the Lynk program to fulfill the requirements of the grant.
The internships spotlighted at LEAP spanned a wide variety of career fields, including in-person work at legal firms, historic museums, medical centers and beyond. Many students completed their internships virtually due to COVID-19, while others experienced a hybrid format that incorporated both online and in-person activities.
Students made the decision together whether to present their panels over Zoom or in person, weighing the pros and cons of each presentation format and choosing the option they felt would best help them connect with their audience.
Sandra Popadic ’22, who presented at the Zoom-exclusive “Researching our Living Environment” panel, believed that displaying her slideshow on Zoom was the optimal way to communicate her experience. Her summer internship, which involved research at the biochemistry company SwissAustral, was entirely virtual.
“When we’re presenting on a computer solely, we’re actually able to have full control over our presentation,” Popadic said. “Even our moderator was saying she loved the Zoom presentation format because she said it was so much more seamless than in person, and I’d agree.”
Anna Chait ’23, who presented in-person as part of the “Exploring Pathways in Law and Advocacy” panel, completed a summer internship at a law firm conducting research for attorneys. Her panel decided on an in-person format that was simultaneously streaming to a Zoom meeting available to the public.
“We all felt comfortable with COVID[-19] procedures that the school has implemented for the semester,” Chait said. “We also just saw a lot of value in having an in-person audience … Zoom is great, but it’s not the real thing.”
Members of the “Media/Film/Television & Literature through the Zoom Lens” panel also opted for an in-person presentation format. Keisy Hernandez-Letona ’22, one of the panelists, completed a virtual internship analyzing photographs submitted by volunteers that documented the impact of the pandemic on family life. While the pandemic complicated the internship process for her and her fellow panel members, Hernandez-Letona believes that the overall LEAP experience was still worth it.
“It wasn’t what we anticipated when we went in, and we all came out surprised, but in the best way possible,” she said.
The LEAP program allows students to connect their internship experiences back to their academics at Mount Holyoke. Hui Shen ’22, an art history major and East Asian studies minor, was able to conduct her internship entirely in person, working as a gallery curator at the Xu Liaoyuan Museum of Modern Art and Design in Chengdu, China. As presenter for the in-person “Museums and Research through Time and Space” panel, she described LEAP as an important part of analyzing her internship and its impact on her career path.
“Sometimes you have new thoughts when you review the old things,” Shen said. Shen felt that her experience indicates great promise for future art curators in China’s developing art market. “I want to use my own way to prove that there’s still opportunities for art history major students,” she said.