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Project Humanities welcomes summer high school interns


Summer Project Humanities interns
July 03, 2014

Four high school students joined the Project Humanities team this summer for the enjoyable and meaningful experience that it offers. These students will spend their summer at ASU writing press releases, facilitating social media, editing documents, working with and being mentored by ASU graduate and undergraduate students, creating videos around the seven principles of Humanities 101 – respect, self reflection, integrity, compassion, kindness, empathy and forgiveness – and helping make changes to the website.

Alina Cao will be a senior at ASU Preparatory Academy in Phoenix this fall. Alina joined Project Humanities as a social media intern not only because of “the opportunity and experience it can provide" for her, but also because of what “Project Humanities is about and tries to promote.” Alina ranks as first in her class and was student of the year as a junior. She hopes to become either an athletic trainer or a physical therapist one day.

Rohini Nott, a junior at BASIS Chandler with a love for the sciences and soccer, has spent her summer volunteering at her local hospital, playing futsal and taking courses at the community college. She also joined the Project Humanities team, because she contends, “in a typical day, a person must be able to embrace other perspectives and values, which is what the project emphasizes.”

A junior at ASU Preparatory Academy this fall, Angela Hagan joined Project Humanities because her “most pressing intellectual goal is to learn about and understand as many different cultures, societies and religions as possible.” Angela loves writing, a skill which she hopes to use to contribute to Project Humanities, an idea that she believes is "extremely important to make people aware of."

Matthew Weisbly, a rising senior at ASU Preparatory Academy, wants to become a history professor and an author one day. Project Humanities appealed to Matthew because of “its focus and drive on raising awareness of the humanities,” which have great interest to him. Matthew sees the project as a way to volunteer in the community and be involved as a student. Most importantly to Matthew, it is about “keeping something for the future and ensuring that others can have the same opportunities we have.”

In addition to these high school students, Luis Avila – coming to the project through the Phoenix Youth Reach and Invest in Summer Employment  (RISE) program – joined the internship team as well. Luis is only 18, but he already knows he wants to develop a scholarship foundation of his own someday that focuses on assisting low-income students in obtaining a college education. A rising sophomore, he is currently pursuing an industrial engineering degree at St. Mary’s University.

Despite their varied interests, these students who are connected through Project Humanities believe that interning with the initiative will be a meaningful experience for them. Director of Project Humanities Dr. Neal Lester says, “Project Humanities is very fortunate to have with us this summer an exceptional team of ambitious and talented interns who each bring energy and excitement about humanities across disciplines.” Lester wants the students’ ideas about how to bring more high school students into Project Humanities programming. He expects not only that “this experience will familiarize them with the broad sense of what Project Humanities does,” but also “what life at ASU is like as potential students.”

For more information about Project Humanities, visit humanities.asu.edu, or call 480-727-7030.