91Ô­´´

Natalie Kurek spent her summer as the Community Engaged Internship (CEI) program intern, working on urban watershed outreach and educational programming on topics such as stormwater management and urban heat with Delaware Sea Grant. Natalie sat down with Delaware Sea Grant recently to talk about her summer internship experience.

Could you give me some background about yourself? What are you studying at the 91Ô­´´?

I am a junior at 91Ô­´´ in the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment. I'm an environmental science major and I have a concentration in marine science. I also have a minor in energy and environmental policy.

How did you get interested in environmental science?

I grew up in a great area. I'm from Jackson, New Jersey, kind of near the coast but also in a nicely wooded kind of town. My dad is a big plant guy. He studied landscape architecture in college, and he works in that field. So, from a young age, I liked being outside and all that good stuff.

Could you talk about what you've been doing this summer?

My mentor is Emily Maung Douglass, urban watershed specialist with Delaware Sea Grant, and she is so amazing. She works in certain territories of Wilmington along the Route 9 corridor and so I've gotten to come along with her to community meetings in the neighborhoods that she works with and hear people's opinions and what their struggles are with their infrastructure and things like that.

I found that to be rewarding because I haven't really gotten that kind of exposure before and so those opportunities have been great. We've also done a lot of youth outreach events in those same areas with the Boys and Girls Club and some camps.

Working with kids is something that I've always loved to do, but I really enjoyed talking to them about science and figuring out what they know and what they don't know. It's interesting to find ways to explain science in a way that they'll understand.

I've also created some content plans to put, hopefully, on the Delaware Sea Grant Instagram: just explainers of different concepts like green stormwater infrastructure and topics that pertain to people living in the city. That way, when they see it, they can get background on what it actually is.

Have you ever thought about being an educator or interacting with the public?

At 91Ô­´´, outside of my academics, I am involved in the campus radio station, WV91Ô­´´. Last year, I was the general manager and this year I'm the program director, so it takes up a lot of my time. But I've always thought of communications and communications media as sort of a hobby.

Now, I've been thinking more and more about ways to merge communications and science, and I think that’s something I learned this summer. I've learned that science communication is a big part of engaging people and making science more accessible. So, this internship helped me because I was looking for opportunities to be engaged with local communities, and it has been perfectly lined up with my interests and what direction I'm going in.

What has been the most beneficial aspect of the internship?

It's been getting to interact with the people, making connections and having so many great conversations. I think that aspect on its own really gave me a focus. Not that I wasn’t focused before, but it made me think more of like ‘OK ,this is this is a little niche I found that I really like and I would like to apply myself to that moving forward in whatever way it might be.’

For me, that exposure to people and learning how to talk to them about science is what I'm getting at. It was great to figure out how to be a communicator.  

What was it like working with Emily?

Emily is the most amazing communicator ever. Everything from the way she speaks to the way she thinks of things. I really admire her as a person, but as a mentor, she's been so amazing.

She introduced me to people and showed me a lot about what kind of positions there are in the field and stuff like that. That's obviously great for me as I move forward in my career.