Diane Clark and Bill Moran, who operate Greystone Nature Preserve, with their dog, Beannie, an Australian Shepherd, who serves as Greystone’s official greeter.
Greystone Nature Preserve, an experiential environmental educational teaching facility located on 75 acres near Brocton, is the recipient of the Career Development Office’s inaugural Excellence in Internship Advancement Award.
The recognition, fittingly announced in March at the CDO’s 10-year celebration luncheon for the Job & Internship Expo, was based on rave reviews received in surveys of former interns who nominated Greystone, operated by the husband-and-wife team of Diane Clark and Bill Moran, as an exemplary site supervisor.
Sandra Emke, Greystone’s assistant director and Fredonia graduate, accepted the award at the luncheon. She’s also a former Greystone intern and earned B.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies: Environmental Sciences in 2017 and a M.S. in Biology in 2019.
With five students who’ll soon wrap up internships, Greystone has hosted a total of 27 students and has collaborated with 12 different faculty sponsors. Entering the spring semester, 22 students had logged more than 2,200 internship hours at Greystone. These hours will top 2,400 by the end of the semester.
A greater campus presence on campus by Greystone through outreach activities, including last spring’s Earth Day event, has led to a steady increase in the number of students engaged in internships there, said Jennifer Wilkins, internship coordinator and career counselor.
Academic disciplines of student interns are indeed quite varied, encompassing nine departments (American Studies, Visual Arts and New Media, Biology, Business Administration, Communication, Environmental Studies, Geographic Info Systems, Interdisciplinary Studies and Leadership Studies) and 20 different majors and minors.
The path to an internship can begin with networking through informational interviews, career fairs, employer site visits and a network of contacts in the Career Development Office, during the student’s first year, followed by resume development and in-office appointments to discuss internship opportunities.
