Four CC students spent their summer in the heart of New York City, interning at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), where they experienced a hands-on, professional geology environment.
Makena R. Hatch ’26, Elizabeth Spradlin ’27, Corra Lewis ’27, and Mac Schwartz ’27 were participants in the Noblett-Witter Family Internship Program, which was generously established by Bill Witter ’87. The CC Geology Department partners with companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations, such as the American Museum of Natural History, to host internships for Geology students from CC. The Witter Family Fund provides the interns with weekly stipends and covers the cost of travel to and from the internship location. The aim of the Internship Program is for students to gain skills and experience by doing hands-on work and learning fundamental methods that they may use in potential careers. Other host organizations for the Noblett-Witter Family Internship Program have included the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Los Alamos National Laboratories, Harthree Partners, and Neptune and Company.
Spradlin, Lewis, Hatch, and Schwartz spent the six-week internship working to conserve and curate fossil marine invertebrates in the Columbia University Collection.
“Our process involves dusting off specimens and specimen labels, rehousing specimens into archival-grade boxes, assigning specimens new specimen numbers, photographing specimens, and recording all specimen label information into the museum’s online database,” says Hatch, who is studying Geology with a focus on Organismal Biology and Ecology, as her interests lie at the intersection of marine science and geoscience, specifically in ocean-atmosphere interactions and paleoclimate reconstruction to provide insights into climate behavior on massive time scales. “Our work makes specimens more widely available to researchers, allowing the fossils to contribute meaningfully to ongoing research.”
The collection they worked on was acquired by AMNH from Columbia University in 1975, but the ownership of this large resource didn’t transfer to the museum until 2022. The students all worked on the one cataloging project but had different jobs that rotated. They also blogged about their experiences during the internship.
The students say that not only did the internship give them an advanced look into potential career paths, it also taught them valuable skills that will help them throughout their lives, regardless of what career they chose. They learned how to navigate group and workplace relationships and how to collaboratively solve problems in a professional environment.
“Some parts of this internship that I have found to be hugely valuable have been establishing workplace relationships, diversifying my skills to include conflict management and resolution, collaborative problem solving, workflow development, and databasing, a generous income that has allowed me to learn to budget, and the many opportunities to network with professionals in my field of interest,” Hatch says.
Lewis loved working at the museum and said that it was a good experience to work a 9-5 job for the first time.
“My favorite thing about the internship was getting to see behind the scenes at the museum and meeting some of the incredible people who work there,” Lewis says. “We got to see the museum’s enormous dinosaur collection, including fossilized dinosaur skin. Many of the people we met have been working at the museum for decades and told us interesting stories.”
The four CC students worked on a team together under the leadership of Bushra Hussaini and Dr. Hilary Ketchum. Hussaini has been the Senior Museum Specialist of Fossil Invertebrates at AMNH since 1997, where she manages the curation, conservation, and digitization of fossil invertebrates, hoping to make them available online to scientists around the world when the museum KE Emu database goes live next year. Ketchum is the Curatorial Associate of Invertebrate Paleontology at AMNH, coordinating and supervising the management of the invertebrate paleontology collection, which comprises over five million specimens from across the world.
“Our work with the Columbia University Collection has been made possible under the guidance and mentorship given to us so generously by Hilary and Bushra,” Hatch says. “We are beyond lucky to have had this opportunity to intern at AMNH this summer under the supervision of these two mentors.”
4 responses to “Geology Students Intern at American Museum of Natural History”
When I read that geology students are interning at a natural history museum I was a little puzzled and reading further, more puzzled! Geology means tectonic plates; glaciers and rock formations to me , with only a little emphasis on the creatures that inhabit those formations! And then the identification of “CC” kept appearing without explanation. Anyway it’s really not up my alley but I’m glad they are getting good funding and support. I’m a fine artist and psychology graduate and interned at the Southwest Museum Of The American Indian . I received no support and no job offers or leads. I’m an indigenous girl with heritage in Cherokee and Blackfeet tribes ( aka Sitsika). I was offered to take a 9 month class after my internship for docents free of charge and I accepted. No one was interested in my artwork or my educational background. It’s astonishing to me that things that are dissected and diseased are more fortuitous than live people and their art and culture. Bu congratulations to those who make the mark.
Oh I just read your “ acknowledgment “ of the tribes that inhabit that area! Recocognition is a complicated topic…. I don’t even recognize my daughter most of the time and I wonder what my grandmother from Montana should really look like if she was allowed to be her indigenous self. Aho’?
Que Paso!
Congratulations to these students for participating in this wonderful opportunity that the Noblett-Witter Internship provided. I used to frequent this museum when I was a child visiting my grandparents who lived literally across the street. As a geology major at CC (’82) I remember collecting a solitary horn coral from the Ordovician Manitou Limestone in Paleontology & Stratigraphy class. I still have that today!