Over Spring break, five undergrads studying religion and classics under Professor Nick Gresens headed to Rome for a week full of visits to the ancient sites of Cicero and Caesar, where the group would read inscriptions and study the geography and history of locations where Rome’s leaders once convened and shaped the classical world. And, in the surprise of a lifetime, the group also experienced history in the making, as cardinals from around the world gathered in Vatican City to elect the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

At around 5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 16, Gresens, along with Peter Carlile ’13, Dan Gorman ’14, and Ryan Vogt ’13, made their way to St. Peter’s Square to see the results of the fifth rounding of voting. None of them expected to see white smoke billow from the Basilica.

“At first we weren’t sure if it was white or black smoke. The first puff was grey and then turned to white,” said Carlile, who was among more than 10,000 visitors awaiting the results. “The visceral, emotional response on the square was palpable.”

As the smoke signaled the selection of a new pope, Carlile and Gorman rushed to get as close to the steps of the Basilica as they could. “It was awe-inspiring,” says Gorman, a history and religion major, who took the opportunity to take as many photos as possible.

PHOTO SLIDESHOW: Sasha Tharani ’14 Says Trip a ‘Defining Experience’

Amanda Budreau ’14, a studio arts major studying in Rome for the spring semester, also was able to witness Pope Benedict’s last papal audience. While the excitement was high, with members of the crowd chanting “Viva, Viva, Papa” to the tune of Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Budreau said comparing it to the selection of the new pope was akin to “comparing an elementary school’s talent show to a Beyonce concert.”

Like Carlile and Gorman, Budreau pushed through the crowd to get a closer glimpse of the new pope. All three were able to view members of the Swiss Guard and hear formal announcement that Argentinean cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been selected the 266^th pontiff.

Budreau also noted the reverence amid the celebration of the occasion. “When the Pope asked us to bow our heads, the entire square (which was completely full) was silent, you could hear the sound of the water splashing in the fountains,” she explained. “At the end of his speech, he said goodnight and told us that we could all relax now.”

On Thursday, Meredith Doubleday ’13, along with the other students in Gresens’ course, headed to the Vatican Museums, where they picked up copies of the souvenir newspaper. “It was nice to be in this quiet space,” she said, “reading the paper on the first day after the announcement.”

About the Photos: Pictures 1, 3, 4, 6, and 8 are courtesy of Amanda Budreau, who in addition to witnessing the election of new pope, saw CNN corespondent Anderson Cooper cover the story. Pictures 2, 5, and 7 are courtesy of Dan Gorman. Picture 9, a photo of Nick Gresens and students Meredith Doubleday ’13, Kate Hughes ’13, Ryan Vogt ’13, Peter Carlile ’13, and Dan Gorman ’14, is courtesy of Meredith Doubleday.

In a new course offered this spring, University of Rochester students will take a closer look at Susan B. Anthony’s life. Taught by Professor Honey Meconi, who also is the director of the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies, Susan B. Anthony and Her World seeks to encompass not only the major political issues that defined Susan B. Anthony’s life, but the physical, material, and cultural world which shaped her work.

Here in Rochester, Susan B. Anthony’s home for many years, we are uniquely positioned to explore her life. Meconi plans to capitalize on this with a number of field trips including visits to Anthony’s gravesite, the Susan B. Anthony Museum and House downtown, and to the Matilda Joslyn Gage House, located in Fayetteville, NY. “I’m always struck by how many students have never visited Anthony’s gravesite or her home, much less other nearby sites for women’s history,” Meconi explains. “Seeing these places really puts historical events in a new light, and I want to make sure that interested U of R students have that experience.”

Expanding upon this physical connection with Susan B. Anthony’s life, Meconi is partnering with the Humanities Project to bring four guest lecturers to Rochester, who will discuss different aspects of the social climate surrounding Susan B. Anthony.

Erika Howard ’13, an English major and women’s studies minor, is excited to be enrolled in the course. “I’ve always been fascinated with Susan B. Anthony and her ties to not only the city of Rochester, but our school as well,” Howard says. “Despite this deep link, however, I’ve never had a chance to study her other than a brief covering of her and other suffragists in the Colloquium of Women’s Studies course.”

By exploring Susan B. Anthony’s world, Meconi hopes her students will gain a more informed viewpoint from which to critically examine today’s social issues. “We are far from living in a post-racial society, alcohol abuse is still widespread (not least on college campuses), and one could well argue that women’s rights have eroded in recent decades,” Meconi says. “Knowing how we got where we are today always puts us in a stronger position in dealing with problems.”

Above all, Meconi hopes to impart a deeper appreciation of the challenges Susan B. Anthony undertook, and the strength it took to overcome them. “In terms of challenges for Anthony, the assumption that women were inferior to men in virtually all respects-a claim supposedly supported by “scientific” evidence-made it difficult for her and her colleagues to be taken seriously.  This meant glacial progress towards suffrage, which only came after her death and the death of her closest friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Yet neither woman gave up on their quest for equality.  They knew that what they were working for was right.  Their tenacity remains incredibly inspiring.”

Photo provided by the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies

The University of Rochester has partnered with nine peer institutions to establish a consortium to explore a new, for-credit, online course program called Semester Online. The consortium is working with the company 2U (formerly known as 2tor), which was created in 2008 to develop for-credit online courses.

“As a leading research university, Rochester has a responsibility to shape and define the use of technology to enrich the academic experience for our students,” said Robert Clark, dean of the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and interim senior vice president for research. “This partnership allows us to explore the creation of online learning initiatives with peer institutions that share our mission of delivering education of the highest quality.”

VIDEO: Prof. John Covach Talks Semester Online with Marketplace

VIDEO: Undergrads Share Reaction with 13WHAM-TV

The other consortium members are Brandeis University, Duke University, Emory University, Northwestern University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame, Vanderbilt University, Wake Forest University, and Washington University in St. Louis.

The program is intended to offer academically qualified students an expanded selection of course offerings from some of the country’s most prestigious institutions while giving them the freedom to work, travel, participate in off-campus research programs, or manage personal commitments as they pursue their academic goals. More information about Semester Online courses and the application process will likely be available in early 2013.

Semester Online is one of many approaches Rochester is considering in terms of online education. For the last several months, a University-wide taskforce led by Clark has been assessing the current and future use of technology and digital media in the classroom from traditional, to web-facilitated, to blended courses, to full online.

“Rochester’s interest in online education rests in how it can leverage technology to build connectivity between students and faculty, and how it can develop and enhance the educational experience broadly,” Clark said.

With the addition of the new class “Religion and Hip Hop Culture” this fall semester, the University of Rochester has begun to put academic investment into an important piece of Americana – hip hop – a phenomenon that is slowly but surely catching on at institutions of higher learning across the country.  However, the pairing of these two cultural topics, religion and hip hop, is an unconventional one.  Students posed an important question on the first day of class: how can a whole semester be spent studying the relationship between the two?

“It is the intersection of religion and hip hop that drew many of the students,” explains Associate Professor of Religion, Margarita Guillory, who instructs the class and is a recent addition to the Department of Religion and Classics at the University. “My hope with the class is to show that hip hop culture can serve as an interpretive framework to illustrate the religious views of the artist, including the different ways in which they view religion.”

Guillory’s active teaching style permits open and honest discussion and what she calls “reciprocity between the student and the professor.”  She wants the class to be a “safe space” for people to express their thoughts about religion.

“There is such a broad approach to religion in this course that all types of students can see how religion is illustrated. When you listen to the students, you can actually hear the personal connection with different functions of religion,” Guillory explains.

Students need not be religious or fluent in hip hop culture to take the class, which is designed for students of different backgrounds. Those who grew up without exposure to the music are “blank slates with no preconceived notions” who will “be a bit more open than the student with prior knowledge,” explains Guillory.

Guillory recently completed a doctoral degree in religious studies at Rice University in spring 2011.  Her specialties include American religious history, African American religion, and the intersection of African American religion and American culture, the latter of which is the foundation for “Religion and Hip Hop.”

Notably, there has been a recent increase in the study of hip hop culture in higher education, and Guillory hopes that the University of Rochester will follow suit.  Hip Hop archives were established at Harvard and Cornell universities in 2002 and 2007 respectively, and Cornell has amassed the largest hip hop archive pertaining to the early years of hip hop, called “Born in the Bronx,” in addition to enlisting “grandfather of hip hop” Afrika Bambaataa as a visiting professor for three years.

While completing her degree, Guillory helped teach a class at Rice called “Religion and Hip Hop Culture in America.”  The course, co-taught by visiting professor and rapper Bun B, grew from a roster of about 50 students in 2004 to over 200 students in 2011, becoming the largest humanities class offered at Rice.  This immense popularity is likely attributed to a roster of famed guest speakers, including Mike Epps and Russell Simmons, and a celebrity panel that included artists like Talib Kweli and Lupe Fiasco.

Guillory knew that the “context was right” in her decision to create a similar class at Rochester after her arrival last year.  The religion department was very supportive of her pursuit and aware that she had taught a similar class at Rice.  Furthermore, given the strong music education opportunities associated with the Eastman School of Music and the College’s strong music department, she knew there was a sizeable student population that would be interested in the topic.

Rochester’s academic environment, specifically the open curriculum and the students’ ability to create their own major, also inspired Guillory.  She explains that the academic freedom and the interdisciplinary nature associated with student-crafted majors “creates a space for a class like ‘Religion and Hip Hop Culture’ to exist on this campus.”

Guillory is focused on making the class at Rochester “more robust” by broadening the conception of what religion really is in the context of the “diverse terrain of hip hop culture.”  She hopes the class will show how hip-hop culture can offer an “interpretive lens” for students to analyze artists interpretations of religion and their own environment, including the “humanistically-centered ways” in which people view religion.

Guillory emphasizes that she would like the class to impact the Rochester community, and intends to “bridge the community and the U of R campus” by bringing in a local artist.

According to Guillory, “the class will not analyze ‘every dimension’ of hip hop because there are some parts of the culture that lack religious sensibility.” She acknowledges that there is “definitely a hierarchy of what is publicly displayed” in hip hop; often, popular songs capitalize on the commercialization of “braggadocious” (those who brag about the fame and wealth) artists like Jay-Z or Rick Ross.  Guillory explains, “I’m not arguing that hip hop is religious, but rather that there are certain dimensions of hip hop culture that we can tap into in a very broad way,” such as existential or socially-conscious hip hop.

Guillory was interested in religion at a young age and says she is a “product of the hip hop movement.”  In addition to teaching, she is part a collaborative writing group, “CERCL,” that is currently writing a book called “Breaking Bread, Breaking Beats,” which combines conversation with hip hop artists and the Church about common topics like sexuality and globalization.  She currently serves as co-editor of the Religious Studies Review, and has published several articles and book chapters on various aspects of religion, women studies, and hip-hop. Before pursuing her doctoral degree in 2011 and a master’s degree in theological studies in 2005, Guillory was a high school science teacher for 10 years.

Article and photo provided by Caitlin Mack, an intern in University Communications.

This fall’s production at Todd Theatre, Ubu Roi, has a large cast, which includes Stella Kammel ’12 (T5) and Lydia Jimenez ’13, playing Mama and Papa Ubu, respectively.  Jimenez is majoring in English with a concentration in theatre, and Kammel also is an English major.  Both have been active in the UR’s theatre community.

“During my four years in the program, I’ve assistant stage managed, assistant directed, acted, worked on the props design and construction and scenic painting crew, and participated in the Theatre in England seminar under Russell Peck,”  says Jimenez. “I am profoundly grateful for the endless opportunities afforded to me by the UR International Theatre Program and English Department.”

Kammel has also been heavily involved on campus.  She’s been cast in various plays at Todd Theatre and is member of the campus student theatre company, TOOP (The Opposite of People).  She also is a member of the Masters Swim Club (not to be confused with the Bachelors Swim Club).

Both students have favorite (and memorable) moments and roles.  For Kammel, one was the playing the role of Mitzi in An Absolute Turkey, a flamboyant bawdy Swiss-German woman.  “She was crazy!” exclaims Kammel.  “She had to wield an axe, and was required to impale it in a square board where [the props makers] had painted a Swiss cross.”

Luckily, Kammel hit the mark, bull’s-eye, every single performance.  “I love stage fright,” she says. “That’s the closest I’ve gotten to it here.”

Kammel also is a fan of accents and remembers diligently practicing her German accent during auditions, hoping to get the French sound out of it.  The character of Mitzi was particularly easy to understand, so rather than having to figure out the character, she was able to play with moments and go beyond what she would have been able to do otherwise.  On top of that, Nigel Maister, artistic director of the UR International Theatre Program, was directing. Kammel said she finds him “a lot of fun to work with.”

Jimenez notes that assistant directing Adding Machine: A Musical and closely watching professional actors in more than 25 plays in England has greatly informed her acting.  “I’ve gained an audible and visible understanding of directions and acting notes.  I take a bit of time to process and internalize, and when I’m given a direction, I initially understand it theoretically,” she explains. “Watching actors in rehearsal from the other side of the table in Adding Machine allowed me to see why things don’t work—I was able to hear when they were not being spontaneous in their continually downwardly inflected lines, and see how the actor’s gestures when performed devoid of impulse ‘look only like moves.’”

One might wonder where such a great passion for theatre might originate, and Jimenez explains that there are a lot of reasons why theatre is so important to her and why she is interested in it.  “For one, the theatre is one of the few venues I know of where wholehearted and uninterrupted storytelling can happen nowadays.  I can’t remember the last time I was able to tell a story without a listener being distracted by a text message or other media device.  In the theatre, listeners commit undivided attention to the actors, and actors communicate without disturbance.  It’s refreshing,” she says.

Jimenez also notes that she is “always moved and astonished to witness the enlivening of words on a page: on the actor’s side as they internalizes and vocalizes the text, and on the production side by the lighting, staging, sound and, often, video added to the text in production—all of the aspects that are not present in the little black marks on the page, but that the actors, director and designers conceive.”

Jimenez says that working under visiting guest artist Peter Karapetkov has taught her that these concepts are limitless.  “We are leaps and bounds now from where we were at our first table reading of the show.  Peter continuously changed the blocking, motivations and through-lines of the characters throughout the entire rehearsal process, up until the day before opening, and even slightly after the first performance,” she explains. “Some approaches worked better than others, and even though the constant reworking was frustrating and uncomfortable at times, these limitless interpretations are a celebration of textual ambiguity.”

In Ubu Roi, Kammel’s character, Ma Ubu, was difficult because it was the first time she’s had to sing, which was at first terrifying to her, but has subsequently become a really fun and exciting experience.  Furthermore, because she likes to have the audience like her, it’s very tough with this character, which is quite unsympathetic.  “I don’t like her [Ma Ubu] … well, I do like her, but I wouldn’t want to have lunch with her,” she says.

Kammel also remarks that there are many times in Ubu Roi when there isn’t a specific action the actors are required to perform and so they can just improvise with the space on stage, allowing new things to come out every show.  Additionally, everyone sings and is crazy at the end “which is a lot of fun and super exciting.”  As an added benefit, she gets to eat a lot of chocolate in the show; five pieces a night, and sometimes even six!

“Todd is so much fun and I’ve learned so much being part of the International Theatre Program,” Kammel says. “I feel like it’s not under-appreciated, but also not as well known as it deserves to be.  It should be a real source of pride on campus because everyone puts so much work into it, and at the end the productions are so beautiful. Come see the show! Go Todd!”

Ubu Roi runs through Saturday, Oct. 20, in Todd Theatre on the University of Rochester’s River Campus. Tickets are $7 for UR students; $10 for UR alumni, faculty and staff, and for seniors (55 and over); and $13 for the general public. Tickets may be purchased up to an hour before each performance at the box office. They also are available online at rochester.edu/theatre or by calling 585.275.4088.

In the Photo: Stella Kammel and Lydia Jimenez performing in Ubu Roi. Photo by J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester.

John B. Hinkel III wants to improve the mobility of quadriplegics. So he designed a device that he considers a significant improvement over anything else in the marketplace. And now, the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office has moved Hinkel one step closer to his goal by publishing his patent proposal.

The process started when he was a student at Hopkinton High School in Massachusetts. In his junior year, Hinkel developed a mouse that could be controlled by head movements and presented it at the Massachusetts State Science Fair. A panel of judges awarded him the 1st place prize. He developed the idea further and won 1st place again in his senior year. This time, his prize came with the pro bono patent services of a prominent legal office. By the end of senior year, Hinkel developed the idea and submitted an application to the U.S. Patent Office.

So what is the invention? Hinkel has developed a device that allows paraplegics to control their wheelchairs with gentle head movements. He gives a new way for people with severe spinal injuries to be mobile. Consisting of a headset connected wirelessly to a joystick, Hinkel’s device can be integrated to guide any motorized wheelchair.

“My evaluation of all the other devices was that they are cumbersome and not very user-friendly,” says Hinkel ’14, now a double-major in computer science and Spanish. “So, I decided to design a better device.”

Indeed, his invention is a considerable improvement over other products currently in the marketplace. One available product is the “Sip-and-Puff” which allows users to control their wheelchairs by blowing through a “wand” placed in front of their faces. Another device coordinates the wheelchair through a magnet implanted in the tongue.

Professor Henry Kautz, chair of the department of computer science, is a fan of the project. “John is extraordinary among our ordinarily extraordinary students. Quite a few of our undergraduates are doing original research — but not so many started in high school,” he says. “I’ll look forward to seeing him do even bigger things over the next couple of years!”

Having his proposal published does not mean that his patent has been approved, although it’s very close. Hinkel will need to go through one final approval process before he can be awarded with a patent. Asked what he’d like to do with the rights to his invention, Hinkel admits that he hasn’t thought that far. “I could start a business, or sell the idea to another company. There are a lot of possibilities.”

Hinkel will learn by April 2013 whether the U.S. Patent Office will award him with a full patent.

Article written by Dan Wang, a junior at Rochester, who studies philosophy and economics. Photo courtesy of John Hinkel.

Students at the University of Rochester will have the opportunity to learn from Italian actor and translator Mario Pirovano during a workshop on “The Art of Storytelling.”   The workshop, which is from noon to 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 10,  in Drama House, features a two-hour segment in English from noon to 2 p.m. and one-hour segment in Italian from 2 to 3 p.m.  Pirovano aims to show the audience how “to conquer scenic space,” “use the body to support the voice,” and “show how one can tell a story without scenes, music, videos, or costumes.”

Pirovano also will host a showing of Francis, the Holy Jester (1997), a play by Nobel Prize Winner in Literature and renowned Italian playwright, Dario Fo, at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 10, in the sanctuary of the Interfaith Chapel.  Pirovano, a long time disciple, collaborator, and artistic heir of Fo’s, translated his masterpiece “Lu santu jullare Francesco” (1999) into English as “Francis, the Holy Jester.”  Wednesday’s performance will be the first time the play is performed for an American audience. The event is free and open to the public and includes refreshments and a book signing in the lobby following the performance.

According to Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio, associate professor of Italian and organizer of Pirovano’s appearance at the U of R, the event “serves the aims of the Humanities Project as a point of intersection of several disciplines, departments, and programs, including Italian language and literature, medieval studies, religion, theater, music, and translation studies.”

She also hopes to “attract students of the Italian language towards theater as a powerful tool for language and culture acquisition.”

The event is sponsored by the Humanities Project, University of Rochester, and co-sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, the MLC Italian Program, the Department of History, the Cluster on Pre-Modern Studies, the J. H. Newman Chair in Roman Catholic Studies, The Drama House, The Department of Modern Languages and Cultures of the Rochester Institute of Technology, and an anonymous donor.

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“Rochester was an epicenter of progressive causes,” says Michael Jarvis, an associate professor of history. As activists during this heady period of reform, the Posts knew well and corresponded with a surprising number of national leaders, from Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony to Sojourner Truth, Harriet Brent Jacobs, and William Cooper Nell.

“They were the Kevin Bacon of the 19th century,” says Jarvis, referring to the famously well-connected Hollywood actor so useful in playing the “six degrees of separation” game of association.

In the early 1840′s the Posts became deeply involved in the anti-slavery movement, using their house at 36 Sophia St., now N. Plymouth Ave., as a very active station on the Underground Railroad, says Lori Birrell, manuscript librarian in Rare Books and Special Collection who has served as co-project manager along with Melissa Mead, director of the Digital Projects Research Center.

“They supported Douglass’s newspaper, the North Star, Amy Post attended the first woman’s rights convention in Seneca Falls in 1848 and introduced fellow Rochesterian Susan B. Anthony to the woman’s rights movement,” says Birrell. “The Posts also participated in the controversial Spiritualist movement in the late 1840s. Begun by the Fox sisters here in Rochester, followers believed that through mediums (Isaac Post eventually believed himself to be a medium) they could communicate with the dead.”

To celebrate the launch of the online archive, scholars and students who have worked with the collection will discussed its significance to local and national history during an event on Thursday, Sept. 13.

The papers cover a full century, from 1817 to 1918, with the majority of the material falling during the nearly 50-year span from 1823 to 1872. They include extensive resources related to the Post’s activities in the abolitionist, Spiritualist, and women’s rights movements. Other topics for which there is significant material are: agriculture, the anti-tobacco movement, childbirth, Chinese immigrants, the Civil War, domestic servants, education, the Friends of Human Progress, freed slaves, Indians, medicine, Quakers, the Reconstruction Era, slavery, and the temperance movement.

The Post papers contain 2,089 letters, manuscripts, newspapers, and other material, and the initial online launch will feature a selection of more than 200 letters. Each letter has been scanned, transcribed, and annotated, a project made possible through the generosity of Randall B. Whitestone ’83 and Lisa T. Whitestone. Eventually the library plans to digitize the entire collection.

To date, students have performed all of the painstaking preparation of the transcriptions. “I had each student select a letter, transcribe it, and do research to explain who is being discussed–and what events,” says Jarvis, who uses the archive as a tool for training graduate students about primary sources. “The students have provided a reader’s guide to make the content of the letter more understandable and useful.”

Margarita Simon Guillory, an assistant professor of religion, also incorporates the collection into her class on Spiritualism. Reading and transcribing these private letters, she says, “humanized” historical figures for the undergraduates in her class. “It was amazing for them,” she says. For example, letters from the Fox sisters, reveal how the famed and widely traveled Spiritualist mediums, were also teenaged girls and sometime lonely. “[A]h how I do wish that you were here,” wrote Catherine Fox to Amy Post in this letter from 1850. “[Y]ou know we always loved you.”

But the collection’s importance extends far beyond the classroom. Guillory uses the archive in her own research on Spiritualism and scholars around the world will find these papers a rich source of social history, she says.

For example, Amy Post was one of the early influences on Susan B. Anthony, encouraging and supporting her in entering the struggle for women’s rights. An organizer of both the Seneca Falls and Rochester conventions in 1848, Post was also an editor of the convention Proceedings published in 1870. In this letter from 1861, Anthony urges Post to gather the names of prominent businessmen, lawyers, and judges for a petition, tells of her visit to their mutual friend and women’s rights activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and updates Post on gatherings in Auburn, Boston, and Albany.

Many of the letters are from leaders of the abolitionist movement. For example, Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and former slave, dictated in this letter sent to Amy Post her experience of being assaulted in Washington, D.C. for trying to ride on a public train. Harriet Jacobs, a former slave and author the first slave narrative to detail the sexual abuse of female slaves, discussed the difficulty of writing about such a sensitive topic in this letter to Post. “[T]here are somethings [sic] that I might have made plainer I know- woman can whisper- her cruel wrongs into the ear of a very dear friend- much easier than she can record them for the world to read.”

Mulberg is the sports director and a talk show host for WRUR, and a sportswriter for the Campus Times. This fall he interned for a local sports radio show, and he has secured another related internship for this summer.

“Doing an internship gives you a taste of whether this is really something you want to do,” he says.

Working with Rochester radio host John DiTullio on 1280 WHTK this fall, Mulberg arranged weekly guests and managed the Twitter page during the show.

“I’d interact with fans,” he said. Mulberg would get the opportunity for on-air experience when DiTullio would turn to him and ask “What’s going on on Twitter, Nate?’”

He gained less tangible work experience when the station experienced a round of layoffs. Seeing first- hand the effect on the work environment and on his coworkers “was a valuable lesson,” he said.

Mulberg advises his peers to start looking for internships early, “There are so many opportunities, you just have to put in the work to find them.”

He says he used a network of professors and coaches including English Professor Curt Smith, Head Baseball Coach Joe Reina, and Head Golf Coach Dan Wesley to connect with DiTullio.

Once he’d made contact, he sent a résumé and then shadowed DiTullio for a day before being offered the internship.

Mulberg credits his Gwen M. Greene Career and Internship Center Counselor Dale Leyburn with helping him focus his goals and write his résumé.

Mulberg says he is looking forward to interning at Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia this summer, where he will interview professional players in the area and write articles for the website.

“It’s fun,” he says of the field. “It might not be the most lucrative, but you can make a living doing what you love.”

Article courtesy of the Gwen M. Greene Career and Internship Center and was originally published in the Career & Internship Digest.