When Indiana University Northwest senior Alex Brower started in the university’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Center, she couldn’t imagine that it would lead her to an internship with one of the nation’s premier museums.
“I’m really, really enjoying it,” Brower said. “It’s probably my favorite thing I’ve done while at the university, in terms of opportunities and things like that.”
Through the STEM Center, Brower works as an intern at the Field Museum in Chicago. The geology student works in the museum’s fossil preparation lab, working on various projects, including one studying fish fossils and another with a prehistoric mammal.
“I just kind of help out around the lab and do whatever they need,” Brower said. “Just the other day, I was helping x-ray a bunch of fossil specimens.”
Brower isn’t the only STEM Center student who’s received a prestigious internship with the program’s help. Leah Streetman, a junior biology student at IUN, worked with the U.S. Geological Survey because of opportunities provided by the STEM Center.
The U.S. Geological Survey is a Department of Interior agency that monitors environmental, natural resource and public safety issues, according to its website.
Streetman found the internship through one of her professors, and she worked at the agency’s Lake Michigan Ecological Restoration Station. She studied pitcher’s thistle, a plant typically found in sand dunes, collected leaf samples and helped with data collection.
“I have definitely been grateful,” Streetman said. “I was a student coming in during the spring, and I didn’t really know anybody, but everyone was so willing to help.”
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Brower and Streetman both transferred to IUN from other campuses and said they wouldn’t have had the same experiences at another school.
“I’m really happy to be part of a really cool community,” Streetman said. “It’s definitely helped me find my grounding here, even if I came in as a transfer student.”
Kristin Huysken, associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of geology, helps in the university’s STEM Center. Seeing students like Brower and Streetman succeed makes her proud of the university’s program.
The STEM Center offers students resources, mainly in introductory or 200-level STEM courses. The program also helps connect STEM majors to internships, peer mentoring and leadership opportunities, including tutoring, Huysken said.
The STEM Center can also connect students with other services, including advising, mental health services or food insecurity services.
“In addition to the services that we provide, the STEM Center is also a space,” Huysken said. “We have places where tutoring takes place, but we also have tables and lounge chairs where students can form study groups, and some of our STEM clubs meet in the STEM Center.”
IUN is a commuter campus, Huysken said, so the university will compensate students who work at unpaid internships, including both Brower and Streetman. A Department of Education grant allows the university to set aside money to help those students, Huysken said.
“We can really help these students out,” she said. “We can enable them to take what would be unpaid internships or unpaid experiential learning opportunities, and they can forgo other jobs they might need to afford schools.”
Without IUN’s help, Brower said she’d struggle to do the Field Museum internship because she needs to afford college.
“I have to take the train every day, which is like $15 a day, and it adds up a little bit,” Brower said. “So, having the pay really makes it a lot easier to commit to doing work at the Field Museum.”
Huysken said she’s the leader of the team who wrote the STEM Center grant, so it’s extra special to see students like Brower and Streetman succeeding.
“This is the highlight of my career,” she added. “We’re a small regional, almost entirely undergraduate campus, and we’re a commuter campus, so sometimes it’s hard to engage students after class. But being able to engage them at the STEM Center, I think, is a really important part of their education at IUN.”