RELEASED: July 16, 2009

DANVILLE, KY—This web story is Part 2 in a series this summer about students who have found internships through the Centre Internship Plus program. (Click here for Part 1.) Through Career Services, Centre Internship Plus allows students to apply for high-quality internship experiences—some of which are for academic credit—with extra financial support. Students whose internships are approved receive up to $1,500 to help with expenses.

Senior Ellen Kuhn frequently gets asked what she plans to do with her history and French double major, and her Centre Internship Plus at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH) in Washington, D.C., is heightening her interest in museum work after graduation.

"I've been trying to find a potential career path that combines my love of history with my love for communication," Kuhn says. "I've always loved visiting museums, and I've had some previous experience in museums before this, as a docent at the McDowell House in Danville and as an archival intern last summer. This year I wanted specifically to expand into working with objects."

At the Smithsonian, Kuhn gets to do all of that—and much more.

"With my internship at NMAH, I'm working directly under an associate curator to help gather information and prepare microscopes for off-site storage," she says. "Beyond learning basic museum skills, the best part about my internship is getting to see what a curator position at a large museum entails. I've been surprised at how varied such a job is."

The stipend Kuhn received through the Centre Internship Plus program made her internship possible.

"My internship doesn't include a stipend or housing, so I had to go searching for my own housing in D.C. I wound up in a dorm room at George Washington University, who rents out rooms and apartments to summer interns and volunteers," she says.

Without Career Services, Kuhn says she probably wouldn't have known that the opportunity to work at the Smithsonian existed.

"I originally discovered the internship program through eRecruiting, a database that Career Services offers to students in the Centre Futures program. It provided information about how to apply, so I checked out the NMAH Web site and went through the online application process for the museum," Kuhn says.

The internship program at the Smithsonian is not limited to the curatorial work Kuhn is doing.

"My particular internship is a collections management project, but at the NMAH, as at other Smithsonian museums, there are a lot of different kinds of internships—everything from public programming to research to human resources," she says.

Kuhn is thoroughly enjoying her internship at NMAH.

"I'm about a 20-minute walk from work at the museum on the National Mall and about all of three blocks from the White House," Kuhn says. "I definitely would never have been able to afford staying here if I hadn't received a Centre Internship Plus grant through Career Services. I absolutely love my internship and love to talk about it."

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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Consumers Digest ranks Centre No. 1 in educational value among all U.S. 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/

For news archives go to http://www.centre.edu/web/news/newsarchive.html.