Internship Opens Field of Opportunities

In a world of dinosaur bones, mummies, and ancient artifacts from around the globe, media producer Emily Ward ’09 works with her team at Chicago’s Field Museum to produce informational videos for various exhibits. The museum attracts thousands of visitors viewing its collections of millions of specimens.

For a while during her Trinity education, Ward was “running two tracks.” She loved the study of mathematics but began working with video production and discovered not only a love, but a talent, for the medium during a Trinity Interim trip to Nicaragua.

The trip fed both her ever-present desire to travel and her interest in visual storytelling. Along with fellow Trinity student Jordan Huenink ’07, Ward created a video about the Nehemiah Center, a trans-denominational ministry and community development effort of Nicaraguan leaders and North American missionaries.

Ward later returned to the country and to the Center during Trinity’s Semester in Nicaragua. Students participating in the program are provided with an internship at the Nehemiah Center and live with host families, as they immerse themselves in a new culture. As part of her experiential learning, Ward produced yet another video, this time pursuing the answer to a question she had begun to ask herself each morning.

Being a socially conscious college student, Ward wondered where her coffee came from, besides the local grocery or corner coffeehouse. “I wanted to know whose hands were laboring for my morning cup of coffee,” she explains in her documentary Harvest: the journey to a small coffee farm, in which Ward explores first-hand the meaning of “fair trade” in the coffee industry.

An internship with Cultivate Studios, followed by her next semester program at Trinity, kept Ward a little closer to home as she took advantage of the College’s proximity to Chicago and enrolled in Chicago Semester.

The experience also opened the door for her to work at the Field Museum where Ward interned as part of her semester education. After graduation, she continued working as a summer intern at the museum and was eventually hired full time.