Intern

At my internship with Earth Charter Indiana, I worked for Jim Poyser, the executive director, Shannon Anderson,  the assistant director, and Tatjiana Rebelle, the resilient schools coordinator.  I mainly worked with Jim but Shannon and Tatjiana are always attending the zoom meetings with us. Throughout my time with ECI, my main project has been with working on creating a proposal for the Greening IUPUI Grant. Earth Charter Indiana's current mission is to to educate and train first responders about climate change. When previous interns interviewed first responders in Indiana, the answers were less than welcoming. Many of them felt that climate change was not important enough for it to be incorporated in their training. First responder's careers are changing due to the climate crisis and need to be trained accordingly. With the climate crisis, there are more extreme temperatures, natural disasters, and illnesses. First responders are nurses, firefighters, cops, social workers and so many people around us. My project is to add sustainability to the curriculum or as an elective for the Criminal Justice majors and possibly the Nursing students. . Having students take a course to show how climate change will affect their careers will hopefully allow for open training in the future. When not working on the project, I have attended executive board meetings and researched information for Tatjiana regarding schools around Indiana. I am an asset to the company because of my outreach skills and ability to contact many people outside of their branch. I would like to continue in this job field. This internship assured that my interest and values lay in my major. I plan to continue keeping in contact with Jim Poyser and his team. I would also like to get another internship within the environmental policy career field. I am hoping my next one will be able to be in person or at least a combination of a hybrid experience.

Supervisor: Jim Poyser

Company: Earth Charter Indiana

Citizens Energy Intern