The Intern Experience: The Power of Being There

Editor’s note: This is the last of a four-part series on student internships, produced by interns in the Office of Communications and Marketing: reporting intern Adaora Onyebeke ’17 and photo and video intern Elijah Guerrero ‘20.

ALBANY, N.Y. (September 8, 2017) — During her last semester at UAlbany, Social Welfare major Natalie Turner spent the spring interning with the American Cancer Society HopeClub, a support community for anyone whose life has been affected by cancer.

Students in the School of Social Welfare, like Turner, attain a field placement in order to gain practical experience in social work.

“UAlbany works with a large amount of community agencies and organizations and guarantees to link the students up with different organizations,” Turner said.

During her internship, Turner engaged with and provided support for new and current members, facilitated a support group, led and attended program workshops and developed and updated resource guides.

“I worked as an intern for the club with a partnership at Ellis Hospital, and the work I did in the hospital included talking to a lot of the sick patients in the waiting rooms and providing any type of resource connection.”

Overall, the experience gave Turner an inside look into this prospective work field.

“I would say that this internship definitely helped sharpen my skills for my future as a social worker,” she said. “It has confirmed my goal to one day work as a medical social worker because I was able to get a feel for what skills and attitudes are used by medical social workers as well as what types of challenges clients face in this particular setting.

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