Category: Internships

Have you ever wondered wanted to go down a pathway where entrepreneurship meets environmentalism? Well look no further, this blog post is for you!

My name is Danesha Byron. I’m a senior at UNC studying Environmental Science, Geology and Anthropology. If I had my way, I’d say I study plants, water, and people. In the future, I’ve recently began to dream of opening my own recycling company where materials would be processed. I remember explaining to Corey Adams at the Coastal Studies Institute that I wanted to learn more about how trash is processed and how business/marketing is intertwined in this web. With this, I was able to obtain a valuable internship working with Herb Council at CanStandOBX. Herb Council is a former Wake County Commissioner and current marketing ambassador for the CanStand. His long-life love for protecting all environmental spaces is what made this internship enjoyable. The life lessons I learned while apart of this company will be carried forever.

Some of the fun things that I had the opportunity to do was meet politicians at the Town of Nags Head. I attempted to understand recycling systems as well as gain support for local municipalities to purchase the CanStand. I wasn’t able to gain support for purchasing, but I did learn a lot from these encounters.(See Local Government Section) Also, I was able to shoot, plan, and edit a video with the help of CSI staff and my friend from UNC.

I’d love to share some of the top things I learned while being apart of my internship:

Local Government
The waste management industry relies heavily on the local government to set ordinances and partnerships to ensure residents are receiving resources. Also, these resources are paid for through taxes if individuals live within the district. There’s small amount of funding for different initiatives, therefore, solving environmental issues around the barrier island quickly becomes limited. The most interesting thing that I’ve learned is that every local government runs differently. Although, Nags Head is less than 10 minutes away from Kill Devil Hills, the local municipalities aren’t ran the same way, yet face the same issue. I sat for hours reading through Nags Head policies to figure out how projects such as sanitation and the septic tank initiative were funded for. I truly believe these are facts that every citizen should know and ask questions about.

Entrepreneurship
In the words of Herb Council, “you have to love what you’re doing and be self-motivated. Because there’s no one tell you what to do and how to make your money.” To be a business owner, you have to have a morning routine that starts your day off, such as prayer or even meditation. As we’ve all been told throughout our lives, practice makes perfect. Repetition, partnerships, and learning from your mistakes is what it takes to be successful in the business world.

Self-Reflection
By the end of the internship, I realized that the recycling industry was not for me. I’d rather focus on reducing plastic waste because there’s no where for the recycling products to go to. There’s not many businesses that are accepting plastic wastes, therefore, the chances of plastic waste ending up in landfills are high. Now, I have new goals. My first goal is to learn more about water quality and sanitation issues that affects natural ecosystems and humans. My second goal is to seek getting into politics. I always seen politics as something that I could never be into because they’re slow and I never see many people that look like me. After speaking to politicians, I’ve come to realize that people like me are needed that have backgrounds in various fields that can solve everyday issues.

There’s so many ways to combine entrepreneurship, politics, and the environment on the Outer Banks. The options for internships are endless and there’s so much room to grow. By the end of the internship, I was able to read policies and determine the inflow and outflow of funds from the Town of Nags Head. Then, formulate questions to ask local politicians to see which issues they cared the most about. Each town has cares that are highest on their lists and they’re willing to collaborate on long-term projects. Don’t be afraid to ask questions!

Hopefully, this post aids you in your journey. I often ask these questions: What are you willing to spend your life doing? What challenges have you faced that steered you along this pathway or changed your pathway? Are you willing to try something that’s out of your element?

This semester I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jennifer Karpowicz-Bland at the Dare County District Attorney’s Office. Jennifer is one of two Assistant District Attorneys for Dare County along with Jeff Cruden. Jennifer and Jeff both work to gather evidence for cases, write plea bargains, and try cases for Dare County.

The Dare County Justice Center holds District Court on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday and Superior Court once a month. I had the opportunity to sit in and watch both Superior and District court in Dare County and once in Elizabeth City. In court, a judge will hear a case presented by Jennifer or Jeff, then, most of the time, the client will plead guilty. However, when a client pleads not guilty, the case will go to a trail. In a trial, a jury is picked, the attorneys give opening statements, present evidence, and end with closing statements.

My role as their intern was to first research cases, and second, write summaries for cases. There were four main cases that I researched this semester. The first case I researched concerned the death of a woman who overdosed on fentanyl-laced heroin. The dealer of the heroin is being charged with second-degree murder, a charge that has recently been used to convict drug dealers. When researching a case, I would use LexisNexis, a legal researching tool, to find examples of other second-degree murder cases pertaining to drug overdoses in North Carolina. I also researched Rule 412, or the Rape-Shield Statute, animal abandonment laws, and perjury cases. In addition to research, I wrote summaries outlining the main facts of cases. My summaries were used as a tool in Court in order to brief the judge on the main facts or evidence in the case. Some of the summaries I wrote included a shaken baby case, drug paraphernalia, felony larceny, and shrimping in a closed area.

 

Overall, I have loved this internship. I cannot speak highly enough of Jennifer and Jeff as they both have taught me a tremendous amount about legal terminology, trying cases, and gathering evidence. Jennifer has also been a huge help in giving me advice for applying to law school, taking the LSAT, and exactly what goes into becoming a lawyer. This internship has been an extremely positive experience and I can’t thank Jennifer, Jeff, and Corey enough for providing me with this special opportunity.

 

This semester I had the privilege of interning with the town of Nags Head. My mentor Holly White is the principal planner –and an angel–of the town. There’s not much that in the scope of planning that Holly’s job does not encompass. Her job description involves public policy, community planning, grant writing, stakeholder engagement and environmental issues such as flooding, water quality, and adaptation strategies. Similar to Holly’s job description, my internship included a little of everything dealing with coastal planning.

My primary project was to evaluate improvements of pedestrian and bicycle paths that had been laid out by the Nags Head Pedestrian Plan of 2014. This meant Emma (the other Town of Nags Head Intern) drove from Eighth St. (the town line) to Gulfstream. We took note of new crosswalks, sidewalks, signal lights, and landings and where in Nags Head they had been placed. Early on, this served as a great way for me and her to better orient ourselves to Nags Head and the Outer Banks.

 

Another major project that Emma and I worked on was the mapping of commercial trash routes. This meant that we were up at 4:00 am, out the door by 4:30 am, and at Public Works by 5:00 am. I was assigned the mapping of all front-load dumpster pickup for the town, whereas, Emma took on side-load route mapping. There were many goals and parts to the completion of this project. The first component was obviously the ride along, where we noted the address, name, pad size, dumpster size and number of every location we stopped. The next step was inputting the data into an excel sheet that match pickup locations to town property codes. From there we mapped the routes by hand; however, soon those maps will become digitized. One of the goals was to have visual maps of the commercial trash routes for the town to use in future planning. Another was to have these route maps help advocate for a larger portion of the budget to be allotted to Public Works.

As mentioned earlier, every day in Town Hall was a different one. I worked on numerous smaller projects such as CRS permits. When not working on projects, I did research on case studies on affordable housing, decentralized wastewater plans, or bike paths. There were other times when I just attended Board of Commissioner meetings or followed Holly to cool conferences about sea-level rise in Southern Shores or Raleigh.

I learned a great deal about town planning and local government this semester and I owe a great deal of that to Holly White and Andy Garman and all other Nags Head Town Hall employees.

 

 

Best from your not so local, local
Marium K.

 

A bit about me

As a senior Environmental Studies major with a concentration in Environmental Behavior and Decision Making at UNC Chapel Hill, I committed to the Outer Banks Field Site with a hope for experiences where I could explore and intertwine my passions for environment and ecology, the arts, storytelling, and communicating truth. With my internship with the Outer Banks Voice and Jam Media Solutions, I have been able to do all this and learn so much more — about myself, journalism, and navigating the nuances of a dynamic community.

My mentor, the one and only Sam Walker

With the help of Corey Adams, the Research Operations Manager at the Coastal Studies Institute, I gained my mentor, Sam Walker, who has guided and supported my work and growth as an aspiring [student] environmental journalist these past few months. As news director of the Outer Banks Voice (online local news publication) and Jam Media Solutions (radio broadcasting organization), Sam has made these opportunities to explore journalism via different platforms possible for me, and I am so excited to continue making the most of it. He has shown me that a passion for media and journalism can manifest in multiple forms for someone, as is evident by his dedication to traveling for sports refereeing on top of his work as news director.

Behind the scenes of my internship

• Outer Banks Voice 

For the Outer Banks Voice, I have been working on my first long-form feature article, which will explore what the Coastal Studies Institute can offer, from the students’ perspectives. Throughout the semester, I have interviewed current and former OBXFS students, the CSI director, Dr. Reide Corbett, and graduate students from East Carolina University. I have had so much fun hearing everyone’s narratives and learning how to compose a comprehensive piece that truly captures our diverse voices. This week will be the home stretch for editing and publishing the final story, so keep an eye out at the Outer Banks Voice website!

The station has physically hosted my internship these past few months, and I have had a wide variety of experiences on that end, from shadowing Sam to various interviews and story/reporting opportunities, to attending Dare County Commissioners Meetings, to troubleshooting technical roadblocks. We have spent a fair amount of time doing technical work on stories at the station as well. After publishing my article, I will be spending the rest of the internship time doing broadcasting work, which I have already witnessed and learned about, so I am beyond excited to actively train for it. Keep an ear out on the local radio for my (personally) much-anticipated amateur debut!

This semester I have had the pleasure of working at the Outer Banks Center for Dolphin Research, a 501 c(3) non-profit focus on the study of bottlenose dolphin in the northern Outer Banks through non-invasive photo identification. This research is mainly for the purpose of studying dolphins population patterns and ecology, health, and behavior of dolphins in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary System. My mentor was Jessica Taylor, who completed her undergraduate studies in Marine Sciences at Rutgers University and received her Masters in Environmental Management at Duke University. She taught me so much about dolphin behaviors and patterns and about the methods of dolphin research. The research done in our organization contributes to the Mid-Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin Catalog, or MABDC, and our studies are compared with to research done in other areas along the East Coast.

My internship was pretty much divided into two parts. Every other Wednesday, as well as the first few Mondays in the semester while it was still warm, I would go out on the boat to assist with dolphin tours or dedicated surveys. The dolphin tours were open to the public, and attracted many tourists. I would be in charge of recording the data, including environmental conditions like salinity and water temperature, as well as how many dolphins we saw, their behavior, and any recognizable fins. Jess had the professional camera and would photograph the fins any time dolphins were spotted.

 

One of the dolphins we spotted on a tour. This one isn’t quite as distinguishable by the dorsal fin. That is one of our rival dolphin tour boats in the back.

Dolphins are actually uniquely distinguishable by markings on their dorsal fins, which is how they are matched in the catalog. The dedicated surveys were on a much smaller boat, and were only with 3-5 people, including some volunteers for the organization. They were specifically for recording any sightings, while the opportunistic surveys were for the public and helped to raise money.

An example of the data sheet that we took out for every survey.

Every Monday as well as some Wednesdays when there weren’t survey, I would work on the computer with the photos from previous dolphin sightings. The first step once the photos were uploaded to the computer was to crop the photos to only include the part with the dorsal fin and sort the photos by assigning it a letter starting with A. Each fin was sorted for each sighting in this manner, with repeat fins being sorted with the same letter. This sorting would be verified by another researcher. The next step took place in FinBase, the automated software used for fin matching. On FinBase I worked on some photo quality grading, where numbers were assigned based on different aspects of photo quality. Then I matched the fins to existing fins in the database, which contains over 800 unique dolphins.

Left: Another dolphin spotting! Right: This is Onion, one of the most recognizable dolphins, because of his many scars, likely due to rubbing up against the bottom of boats.

I really enjoyed getting to learn more about the research of marine mammals, something I had very little experience with prior to this semester. I am currently compiling my research into a paper explaining the work I did and explaining its relevance as well as how the methods could be applied to future studies. I also recently recently volunteered at the Outer Banks Shrimp Cookoff, a fundraiser for the OBXCDR, where chefs from 8 restaurants in the Outer Banks competed to win the best shrimp dish. I worked at the Dolphin Outreach booth with former intern Liz Mason, educating people about what we do and helping to sell T-shirts. It was a great event and raised over $9000 for further research! All in all, I had an awesome experience this semester and learned a lot; it introduced to the many doors involved in the research career and I am very grateful for it.

I’m Autumn and I’ve been interning with Ann Daisey, the Community Conservationist for Dare County, at the Dare County Soil and Water Conservation District. I’ve mainly been tasked with revamping the Dare County Soil and Water website. Ann needed some help collecting more information on things like cost share programs, stormwater best management practices, wetlands, native plants, etc. to add to the website. I only had minimal experience with webpages coming into this. I have taken a couple INLS classes at UNC and I have helped a personal friend with their own webpage. But that’s the cool thing about internships. You can have little to no experience coming into them. They are a great opportunity to explore your interests in a field that you haven’t experienced before, or haven’t experienced much.

The Dare County Soil and Water Conservation district helps property owners do voluntary conservation of our natural resources and to know what the needs of the environment in Dare County are. Ann provides assistance to businesses, homeowners, and municipalities with natural resource management, stormwater management, and water quality and soil erosion problems. She helps property owners by providing educational and technical assistance with things like implementing stormwater best management practices, soil testing, and other things like land surveying for soil smoothing. Some common stormwater best management practices in Dare County include: marsh sills, permeable pavement, rain barrels and rain gardens. Rain gardens are highly recommended by the Dare County Soil and Water Conservation District. Ann can offer advice on how to design and implement a rain garden including how to select the best vegetation for stormwater drainage. Rain gardens are easy to install, easy to maintain and cost effective. I had the opportunity to take part in a rain garden restoration project at Roanoke Island Festival Park in Manteo, NC.

Before planting my plant, I had to separate the roots. This is important because you want to make sure that the roots can branch out in the soil. I also planted a few needle rushes along the edge of the rain garden using a dibble to create holes in the ground. In the end, with everyone helping, it didn’t take long at all to restore this rain garden back to its full potential. When I returned to the rain garden a few days later, after a rain event, the rain garden was holding water (some of which it collects from a French drain leading to the area). Success!

 

  

I had the absolute pleasure of interning with the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education this semester. Located right next to the Currituck Banks Lighthouse in Corolla, this place has everything: a pond filled with neat invertebrates to examine, a sound-side public access point to the water, and an exhibit dedicated to Eastern North Carolina’s ecological composition and its hunting and fishing heritage. 

I work alongside a team of super-friendly, supportive women, including my mentor, Karen Clark. They have all taught me so much about how to be the best educator I can be! 

I participated in tons of different classes and projects this semester. I helped the Lead Educator, Sarah, teach classes to members of the general public each Wednesday. This included different classes each week, rotating among ones like crabbing, an educational walk through the maritime forest, and kayaking. We also would lead a school group from Water’s Edge Village School, a local charter school, in a pond scooping activity on Wednesdays. After scooping up critters from ponds and placing them into buckets, we’d help the students count, identify, and describe some of the creatures they found as they recorded this information into their field journals.

The Citizen Science Specialist, Marissa, and I would also conduct classes on Mondays. An ongoing project is Box Turtle Tracking, where we utilize radio telemetry equipment to track a resident box turtle that hangs out in the Currituck Banks Reserve. This project also acts as a citizen science project, with families being able to sign up to learn how to use the equipment and come along as we search for the turtle (affectionately named Turt Russel). This project is definitely one of my favorite parts of my internship. As the weather cooled down, it was much more enjoyable to tromp through the maritime forest and look under brush and trees for our elusive turtle.

A map noting the various locations of where we have found the turtle shows where he moves throughout the reserve.  In addition to this project, we also marked and gathered information about any other turtles found within the reserve. All the information we collected acts as part of the ever-expanding database of knowledge scientists across North Carolina are compiling to better understand Eastern box turtles.

Other citizen science projects we worked on included Caterpillar Count and Shorebird Survey. Both of these projects are classes that anyone can sign up to participate in on the Center’s website. Caterpillar count looks as how arthropod presence on trees is being affected by climate change. We sampled several trees within a predetermined location by hitting a branch with a stick ten times and holding a white sheet underneath the branch to catch the bugs that fall off. We then would count the number and type of each arthropod and input this into a larger database that contains information about the trees and other environmental data.

Shorebird Survey was pretty much as it sounds— we would go out to a specified beach location with birder volunteers and, using a keen eye and binoculars, would count the number of each different species of shorebird seen within walking a mile of the starting location. I loved this project because it was a great reason to go for a stroll on the beach!

Each Monday when I wasn’t assisting with classes, I was working on creating an interactive bulletin board to go along with the existing photographs taken with motion-sense cameras for our Critter-Cam project. I created a maritime forest backdrop and placed silhouettes of various Eastern North Carolina maritime forest species within the scene. Each silhouette could be flipped over to learn about the animal and any of its unique adaptations. The board also provided information about maritime forests and about the ways to classify animals by the time of day in which they were active. This board was very fun to create, allowing me to be creative and use my artistic abilities.

I have learned so much about making an environmental education program engaging and about how to be an effective instructor. I will take these skills with me far into the future as I continue to pursue a career in education! 

-Emma Josephine Karlok, OBXFS ’18

Fall greetings from the coast! OBXFS ’18 student Emma Szczesiul is sharing a post about her internship for the semester. 

Do you like to talk trash? And recycling? Do you like to see the inner workings of local government in a thriving coastal tourist town? I got to do all these things this semester as I had the pleasure of working at the Town of Nags Head for my internship!

As one of 2 OBXFS student interns for Holly White, the Principal Planner at the Town of Nags Head, I had the opportunity to work on preliminary work and feasibility studies on commercial recycling for the town. With no current commercial recycling program (through residential recycling is picked up every week), I worked with my fellow intern to take an inventory of commercial dumpster size, location, and route for all commercial trash pickup spots in Nags Head. And yes, this did involve waking up at 4:30AM and riding around in a garbage truck! With a current need to switch from side-load dumpsters to front-load dumpsters, the inventory was needed to see which businesses have not yet converted. This data will also be put into GIS for route-tracking and management, and allows for the town to see which businesses still need to make the switch.

Aside from trash duties, I was able to attend monthly Board of Commissioners meetings and get a feel for how local government works. As a special treat early on in the semester, I traveled to NC State to see Holly speak at the screening of Tidewater, a documentary that discusses sea level rise (SLR) and its impact on coastal areas and the military.

My other day-to-day duties include communicating project updates to other team members, reviewing documents with Holly, researching materials when needed, and, like any good intern, making sure my mentor is well caffeinated (coffee, anyone?).

Looking back on this picture from my first day at work, I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed! From riding around in town cars to spending long days in the conference room going through files, I’m thankful for this opportunity for professional development and the kind, hard-working people I’ve met along the way.

 

 

Emma Szczesiul

OBXFS ’18 / UNC ’19

This semester I had the honor of working for the North Carolina Coastal Federation, a member-funded 501(c)3 organization with offices in Newport, Wrightsville Beach, and Wanchese, North Carolina. I spent most of my Mondays and Wednesday at their beautiful Northeast branch (picture below, and my personal office (they take really good care of their interns) even had a beautiful view of the Sound.

 

The Coastal Fed seeks to empower coastal residents and visitors from all walks of life to protect and restore the water quality and critically important natural habitats of the North Carolina coast. Much of my internship was spent with my amazing mentor, Sara Hallas, who is the Coastal Education Coordinator for the Northeast branch. I especially appreciated the opportunity of working with Sara because I rarely get the opportunity to work with kids in a way that is relevant to my career as a pre-law student. Sara and I traveled to schools or hosted students at our office to teach them about water quality and the value of rain gardens.

 

I also got to take part in a restoration project at Festival Island Park, where we dug a new rain garden and planted several native plant species!

The vast majority of my work, however, was in assisting the Coastal Federation with their Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project. Started in 2014, the Project enables the Coastal Fed to hire commercial fishermen to collect lost or abandoned crab pots during the no-potting period from January 15 until February 17.

 

In 2018, 76 fishermen collected 3496 crab pots (or 1.7 tons of debris) along the North Carolina coast! From the collection, 2413 blue crabs and 761 fish were released from the lost pots.

My main focus for this project involved what to do with the collected crab pots once they are taken out of the Sound. My goal was to evaluate the costs and benefits of selling and reusing the crab pots, rather than scrapping them for the value of their steel as done in previous years. In this process, I have also done extensive research on the legality of selling the collected pots or even using them as payment for the hired fishermen, which has been great practice for my future legal endeavors.

Overall, my internship at the North Carolina Coastal Federation has been incredibly rewarding. If you live along the coast or love the ocean, consider becoming a member or attending one of their fun oyster roasts, happy hours, or other fundraisers. And if you are a potential OBXFS student, ask Corey to place you there for your internship! With opportunities in politics and lobbying, coastal science, education, and non-profit management, the Coastal Fed has something for everyone!