RELEASED: June 9, 2005

DANVILLE, KY—Having recently returned from studying in Strasbourg, two Centre College students will continue their encounters with different cultures and continents through two very different summer internships.

Rising senior Heidi Lampela is looking forward to a four-week internship in New Zealand where she will work at a veterinary clinic in Dunedin. Her duties will include assisting with check-ups and surgeries, general clinic tasks, and farm calls.

Lampela expects this internship to expand her understanding of veterinary medicine, a field that she has previously only been exposed to through academic situations. "I think this experience will open my eyes to a different perspective in terms of how the clinic runs on a business level," she says. She also cites the opportunity "to work with a wide variety of animals, even including deer" as an extremely important and appealing aspect of the internship.

The only reservation Lampela expresses regarding her summer abroad is a passionate, "It'll be winter there!" But maybe this is payback. Lampela cheated the seasons last January when she spent her January CentreTerm in New Zealand (where January is the height of summer) studying the physical science of volcanoes with associate professor of chemistry Joe Workman.

Although spending July in New Zealand won't create the most desirable circumstances for working on a tan, Lampela remains enthusiastic about her return. The Memphis, Tenn., native is becoming quite a world traveler, having also devoted many of her weekends during the Strasbourg semester to zooming around Europe by train, bus, plane and even ferry.

Like Lampela, Abby Ellis enjoyed a journey-filled semester abroad, but the rising junior from Franklin, Tenn. has begun an internship that will allow her to gain world experience from within her own home town. After learning about the World Relief Organization through a member of her church, Ellis applied for and received a summer internship with the organization's Nashville branch.

Immediately after high school, Ellis had spent two weeks in Uganda, assisting Sudanese refugees as part of a church service trip, so the opportunity to work with refugees again immediately caught her interest. She was also pleased to find a position with ties to both of her majors. "I'll be learning about immigration laws on a U.S. and international level, so this should apply to my government major," Ellis says, adding that the opportunity to tutor refugees in English makes the position a perfect fit with her interests.

In addition to tutoring English, Ellis performs a wide range of other duties including helping refugees fill out essential paperwork they need to begin their new lives in the United States. She also accompanies refugees to appointments at the Social Security office, the Department of Human Services, and the Health Department, where mandatory immunizations and testing take place.

"While I was in Strasbourg, I saw seven countries in three and a half months," Ellis says. "This deepened my international exposure. Yet with this internship I'm encountering people from places like Burundi, Vietnam, the Sudan and Somalia every day without leaving Nashville."

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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/

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