Faith Gallagher ’17 had barely gotten her feet wet as a transfer student at Washington College before she found her first internship where she could apply what she was learning in her art history major.

“I loved it,” she says of her summer internship at the Academy Art Museum in Easton—a place she had known since she was a child, taking classes and attending camps there. Working with her Washington College advisor Donald McColl, associate professor of art history, she landed the internship shortly after transferring to WAC from Chesapeake College in Wye Mills in spring of 2015. “I worked with the curator and almost every other department other than financial—the development office, the library, the curatorial assistant, and I helped install exhibits.”

The part-time internship went well enough that she hopes to intern at the gallery next summer. It’s an ideal arrangement for Gallagher, who’s from Easton. And it illustrates one of the reasons she wanted to attend WAC. With the goal since high school of being a museum curator, Gallagher attended an open house and heard a presentation by McColl.

“It was just really impressive and I just liked what I saw,” she says. “The school doesn’t have a museum studies concentration like some of the other schools do, but it seemed like a very strong school for connections. They showed me a list of internships that students get in the art history department and then in general, and I was blown away because the other schools I looked at really didn’t have that information documented that they could present to me at an open house.”

As a student at Easton High School, Gallagher was set to attend Goucher College until an unexpected death in her family removed that option. Instead, she took three semesters at Chesapeake, earning high enough honors to be eligible for Washington College’s academic tuition scholarship for transfer students who’ve been inducted into the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society. 

“I wanted to go a nice small school, and at this school you just feel very comfortable, everyone smiles at you when you walk down the Cater Walk. People compliment you on your outfit and your hair even if you don’t know them. That happens a lot. And then you get to compliment people back. It’s just friendly, is the word I would use to describe Washington College.”

Now working in Admissions, Gallagher is training to be a tour guide. A member of Animal Impact Club, she volunteers two days a week at the local humane society caring for the animals there. She’s also developing an animal-mentoring program for College students who miss their dogs and cats at home and would like to spend extra time with a particular animal at the shelter, giving them extra attention, posting photos on social media, and helping them get adopted.

“I try to go to a lot of the plays on campus and the other events, even if I’m not required to,” she says. “It’s so fun to be so close to something going on all the time. I like it a lot. It’s been a really good transition.”