Aspiring scholars, professionals return from summer internship

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Two Bloomfield College students have recently returned from a summer institute held at Princeton University as participants in the 2022 Aspiring Scholars and Professionals program. The nine-week, paid, professional development program focused on research methods workshops designed to support students in their daily internship work and prepare them for their professional lives after college.

La-Tina L. Graham, a senior psychology major and McNair Scholar/TRIO SSS student, and Tori A. Seigler, a junior sociology major and EOF/TRIO SSS student, were two of 14 New Jersey college students selected for this competitive opportunity. Each received a $3,125 stipend and housing at Princeton University during the internship, and have access to Princeton Library resources for a full year while they further their skills in next-level research projects back at their home campus under the supervision of Bloomfield College faculty and staff.

During the internship, Graham worked with a Princeton University peer on a 15-minute documentary about the history of the Hedgepeth-Williams Intermediate School, which was at the center of the 1944 N.J. Supreme Court decision that prohibited any New Jersey school district from denying admission to students on the basis of race or skin color, thus neutralizing the “separate but equal” segregation practice in its public schools. Bloomfield College’s TRIO Student Support Services director, humanities lecturer Christina Dilkes, is mentoring Graham during the next phase of the grant-funded project, which will encompass an academic-year research experience or professional internship at Bloomfield College.

“This was a very competently produced film, and we are very proud of the skillful work La-Tina contributed,” Dilkes said.

Seigler’s summer Princeton experience involved developing a new training and onboarding website for the Princeton University Press. 

“Tori built the site from the ground up, taking over the scheduling, editing and interviewing. She did a wonderful job, especially with obtaining content from many different people across various levels,” said Laura Warren Hill, associate vice president for academic affairs and associate professor of history and Africana studies. Hill is serving as Seigler’s home-campus mentor. 

Under Hill’s mentorship, Seigler will become involved in an academic-year project at Bloomfield that will include researching women’s leadership and related issues of power in higher education.

Over these next months, as the grant program continues, the Bloomfield students will continue to be supervised by their Princeton mentors to help them hone the new skills they learned and practiced during the summer program, inclusive of time management and professional communications.

The program also provided the students with insights into how other universities work, and the opportunity to interact with other educators and student peers from other locations. 

“Our students grew a lot over the summer,” Hill said. “Programs such as ASAP extend our students’ classroom learning by providing hands-on learning experiences. In this instance, our students presented to an audience of Princeton University faculty and peers preparing them for professional experiences.”

ASAP is a cohort program at Princeton’s Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity, designed to introduce undergraduates from other New Jersey colleges and universities, especially first generation and low-income students, to higher education careers in the humanities and qualitative social sciences.

  Bloomfield College