Internship Support Let Student Explore Science Communications

Double major Peyton Baldwin ’26 was intrigued after a job shadow at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. A summer internship at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration let her learn more.

Through her time at Washington College, Peyton Baldwin '26 has been able to combine classes from different fields, opportunities through the Center for Career Development, and her own interests to both explore possible career paths and create a resume that will let her go in any of several directions when she graduates.

Since she loves to write, Baldwin found the communication and media studies major attractive, especially given the broad learning opportunities around various mediums, from podcasting to video. She added a business management major (and marketing minor) after thinking through the behind-the-scenes work required for career paths in TV. 

“It was really fun to be very creative with that process. I have this opportunity to do a lot and have it be very broad,” Baldwin said. "I can then use these majors and these minors in a lot of different types of work. And that's what interested me the most. I was trying to set myself up to always have different options in the future.” 

Of course, having lots of options also means a need to pick specific directions to pursue, which is where the Center for Career Development has been helpful to Baldwin. Through a one-day externship (or job shadow), Baldwin got to see how communications are an integral part of the mission and work of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michael's, about an hour south of campus.  

The next year, when the communication and media studies department shared a number of summer internship opportunities with its majors, one in particular caught Baldwin's eye: a position to revamp the branding and outreach efforts of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Observer Program (NOP), which tracks fish populations, collecting data for everything from biological research to setting regulations. 

“I grew up near the Chesapeake Bay, and I thought maybe I want to work in a science- or environment-focused field,” Baldwin said. "So when I saw this opportunity, I thought that seems really interesting because it's still media and communications based and marketing based, but it brings in some of the science aspect that I was potentially interested in.” 

Baldwin spent the summer working at NOAA's James J. Howard Marine Sciences Lab in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and was able to live nearby thanks to funding from the College's Hodson Trust Internship Fund. 

During her time in the internship, Baldwin created the framework for a rebrand of NOP, detailing its benefits, providing possible new names for the agency, and explaining various approaches it could take to developing and distributing a new emblem. Her project is the first stage in helping NOP address a need to better represent advances in fisheries research that now use electronic monitoring as well as human observers, as well as improve recruitment and retention of employees. 

One of the things Baldwin gleaned from that summer experience was the unique nature of working for the federal government, including the long timelines and approval processes that meant her suggestions won't be in place quickly. But she found the work interesting and felt good about making her own (eventual) contribution to their continued success. 

“One of the most gratifying aspects has to be that I've been able to lead the project, not on my own because obviously there's a lot of support that comes with this internship, but I've been given the freedom to come up with my own ideas,” Baldwin said. "I'm setting up a framework that I think would be the best way to go about the project that they're going to be able to take to then implement the rebrand.” 

Baldwin is not sure if she'll stay in science communication or look for work in the entertainment industry (her planned topic for her senior capstone project) or possibly end up in a completely different career. But the things she has studied, the skills she has developed, and the opportunities she has had to explore while at Washington College mean Baldwin will be ready for a wide variety of possible futures. 

—Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven