News-Letter

Media Credit: John Prendergrass Abbey Merendino works as an administrative assistant at the Career Center.

Students looking for summer employment may have more trouble this year due to the recession that has plagued the economy since September.

According to the Mark Presnell, director of the Career Center, many students who typically delved into a vast reservoir of paid and unpaid internships discovered this year that they had fewer opportunities for summer employment.

Sophomore Andrew Lelin, an anthropology major, hoped to find a paid or unpaid internship this summer. He embarked upon the usual process of internship-surfing, meeting with advisors at the career center and checking various websites for available jobs.

"I went to an internship fair held here and got a lot of information," Lelin said. "I kept looking at different companies' websites and checked Craig's List for jobs."

However, Lelin was very disappointed by the limited postings that he found.

"Nothing was really appropriate for a summer job," Lelin said.

"Last year I went through the same process and I noticed that compared to last year there was a lot less available."

Dr. Mark J. Presnell, the director of Hopkins's Career Center, says that there may be a valid reason for the limited internship opportunities this summer.

"Companies and firms are posting internships later this year," Presnell said. "We've had conversations with companies setting May 15 as the deadline for internship applications, which is considerably later than usual."

Presnell agreed that the current economic situation may be making things more difficult for students searching for summer employment.

"Companies may be hiring less interns overall," Presnell said. "They are certainly wondering if they should offer paying internships, since funding for internships is much more difficult to obtain now."

However, not all Hopkins students have had serious difficulty obtaining paying or non-paying jobs for the summer.

In fact, students seeking research positions with professors at Hopkins have generally been successful in doing so.

"My advisor told me I should try doing research with professors in the Materials Science department this summer," sophomore Seann Convey said.

"I applied for a research grant and got approved, so I'm guaranteed a spot over the summer."

Continued...

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