By Sarah Lindenfeld Hall
On any given day, the 20 interns in NC State’s Campus as a Classroom program might be anywhere on campus — measuring the microbial composition of compost piles, researching how to integrate more electric vehicles into the university’s fleet or handing out potted basil plants at a Wolfpack baseball game.
Launched in fall 2021, the program matches undergraduate and graduate students with faculty or staff-led sustainability projects. Through their work, interns help make NC State more environmentally friendly while bolstering their professional skills through real-world training and workshops. “They’re very motivated . . . and they’re very passionate about these projects they’re working on,” says Jessica Bast, a coordinator in NC State’s sustainability office who leads the program.
Claire Henson ’22, who will receive her master’s degree in textile engineering in May, is in her second year as an intern in the athletics department. Her tasks have included updating the department’s website to highlight its sustainability efforts and developing sustainability activities for every varsity sport — from those basil plant giveaways to helping create a video about the favorite outdoor spaces of members of the men’s basketball team.
Henson, 22, of Hickory, N.C., hopes to eventually develop sustainable textiles for the sports or outdoors industry. That will require her to lean on the scientific skills she’s learning in the classroom. But convincing people to seek out more environmentally friendly products is important, too. And those are the skills she’s gaining through the internship.
. . . what really connects with people is finding something that they want to preserve . . .
“I found that what really connects with people,” she says, “is finding something that they want to preserve and realizing that if they don’t do something about it then they could lose it.”
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