Summer internship: Mapping out her future

An English major with minors in digital public humanities and Spanish, Camryn Wimberly ’23 made strides toward her career this summer, interning for her local clerk’s office in Mount Holly, New Jersey.

As part of her internship, she wrote communication pieces such as a voter registration manual and a newsletter on voting processes for residents of New Jersey. She spent the majority of her time working in an archiving project, processing and recording information from original maps of townships in Burlington County.

“The archiving project had actually been in progress for a couple of years, but there had not been a lot accomplished because there wasn’t anyone willing or able to commit to it,” she said. “Throughout my time working at the office, I was able to take the lead on this project.”

She and the team sorted the county’s archived maps, numbering and scanning the physical copies so community members could access them. By the end of the summer, she had completed and verified around 800 maps of the area.

In addition to her internship, she spent five days of her summer participating in Wheaton College’s Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts Symposium, after applying and earning acceptance into the program with the help of Kerry Hasler-Brooks, associate professor of English at Messiah University.

“I recommended Cam for the Wheaton symposium because she has a unique tenacity and eagerness for learning. She approaches her education as an opportunity not only to develop professional skills but to grow her character, engage her faith, pursue the call to justice and develop thinking practices that are generous, critical and creative. I am excited to play a small part in her journey as a college student, and I already anticipate the ways she will serve beyond her time at Messiah. She is a remarkable young woman,” said Hasler-Brooks.

At the symposium, participants gathered daily to discuss readings; current topics in higher education; the philosophical teachings of Aristotle and Plato; and visual and written rhetoric.

Wimberly says she grew a lot over the summer through her internship and her attendance at the symposium. “Coming out of lockdown, it was wonderful to meet new people from all different walks of life, whether it was my coworkers or clients. I also loved the wide range of tasks I was given, since there was always something different to accomplish,” she said.

— Molly McKim ’23