A Museum, Laboratory, and County Office: Three Students on Their Pittsburgh Internships
Today is National Intern Day. To celebrate, Pulse@ChathamU is highlighting three Chatham University undergraduates, each of whom is in the midst of a summer internship in the city of Pittsburgh.
These stories serve as just a few examples of the internship and employment opportunities Chatham students have at their doorstep, whether they want to research cells in a laboratory, help organize centuries-old plant specimens at a museum, or design posters for county parks.
Vania Ramirez ’25
The Assembly
Vania Ramirez came to Chatham University in 2021. Though she grew up in bustling Mexico City, she graduated from high school with a class of about 30 students. She didn’t like the idea of spending her undergraduate years at a big university and chose Chatham sight unseen except for a virtual tour of the campus.
After making new friends and exploring Pittsburgh for the first time, Ramirez said, she spent a good deal of her second year doing research with Professor Jorge Sierra Fonseca, with whom she worked on a chronic stress model for cells.
“It’s definitely been one of the best experiences at Chatham I’ve had, just being in that lab,” said Ramirez, who majors in biology.
After doing industry research at New Base Therapeutics, she started an internship at The Assembly, named for its past life as a Ford Motor Company assembly plant. Now, it’s a major biomedical facility with research labs and offices located just minutes from Chatham. Ramirez said she walks to the lab, works with cell cultures, and sets up experiments.
“I have my dishes just growing the cells,” Ramirez said. “I make sure they’re not dying. To set up my experiments, it’s called splitting and seeding—you split the cells, because they start to make connections with each other, and transfer them to a different plate. You have to count them, which is pretty tedious at times.” Under a microscope, she said, they look like grains of rice.
Since she’s been living in Pittsburgh, Ramirez has become familiar with the neighborhoods around Chatham, walking to bookstores and second-hand shops. She said she also enjoys trying the city’s many restaurants.
“One of my biggest things when I came here was trying different Mexican restaurants,” she said, naming Las Palmas, El Colibiri, and Tocayo among her favorites.
Ky Chapman ’24
Allegheny County
A recipient of Chatham’s Rachel Carson Healthy Planet Award, Ky Chapman came to the University from Pittsburgh’s east suburbs to study the arts.
“A lot of my art history classes, I really enjoyed,” said Chapman, who majors in visual arts and studio arts. “I never expected that I would enjoy art history and learning about the meanings behind things, learning about the ‘whys’ outside of how we typically learn history.” Chapman ended up taking enough classes on the subject to add a minor in art history.
Thanks in part to a portfolio of work she amassed by doing posters and other visuals while working for Chatham, Chapman in May started an internship with Allegheny County, where she works on designs for their parks and events department. The work has included making brochures for Round Hill Park and Heartwood Mansion, which she got to tour.
“It’s not every day you get to tour a fancy mansion and learn the history of it,” Chapman said. “It helped me get inspired artistically, but also I just learned more about the area in general.”
While the job mostly has her working in county offices downtown, Chapman said she likes to spend her summer exploring the city on her own: going to Point State Park, the Strip District, and Oakland, where she enjoys eating at Ali Baba, a family-owned Syrian restaurant.
“One of the many benefits of Chatham is having a student ID that can allow you to get on the bus for free,” Chapman said, as well as free entry to the Carnegie Museums.
“A lot of artists worry about finding experience or finding the right thing,” Chapman added. “Seeking out and taking advantage of local opportunities to help you slowly build up that experience will really help you branch out whenever you do want to do something different.”
Corrine Garda ’25
Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Corrine Garda thinks the whole environmental science program at Chatham is great.
“I think everyone is just very authentic, and I feel very comfortable,” Garda said. “I feel like I can make friends easily.”
Her advisor, Professor Linda MK Johnson—she calls her “Dr. J”—introduced her to “mounting” in their botany lab. It’s the process of taking dried and preserved plant specimens and carefully attaching them to a piece of paper, so they can be studied and archived. During that course, Professor Johnson noted to Garda that she knew one of the staff members at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Garda inquired about an internship, which she started this summer.
“I didn’t realize I was going to be so interested until I took botany in the spring,” Garda said.
At the museum, Garda works hands-on with dried and preserved specimens in the botany lab, doing mounting, imaging, and georeferencing.
Studying and working in the city, Garda likes to spend her free time perusing the shops of Walnut Street in Shadyside, the many restaurants in Squirrel Hill, and going to city parks, like Mellon Park near Chatham or Schenley Park by the museum.
“I really lucked out with this,” she said of her internship there. “It’s awesome and I love it. Every time I come here, I’m so excited. I work with great people, and I see something new every day.” The museum, she said, has over 500,000 specimens from all over the world, some of which are over a century old.
Correction on July 30, 2024: A previous version of this story misstated the name of a scholarship.