Image by Katherine Chen ’22
The Ethics Center works with SCU students through many of its programs, internships, and fellowships to help them grow independently within their respective fields. One of those programs brings in talented students to help with the Center’s marketing and communication efforts.
The current team of four interns consists of Mackenzie Airhart ‘22, social media intern, Simitrio Arellano ‘22, graphics intern, Katherine Chen ‘22, web design intern, and Sahale Greenwood, ‘21, journalist intern, all under the guidance of Debbie Dembecki, assistant director of digital marketing, and Joel Dibble, senior director of news and public relations.
Although each intern has an assigned area of focus, they are all prepared and expected to work as a team, filling in for one other and floating to where they are most needed. Before beginning the internship, the four interns all completed training in the web management application behind every Ethics Center web page and engage in ongoing tool training for a variety of social media, email marketing, and graphics management systems. The team meets weekly and communicates daily to create the finished product viewers see when visiting the Ethics Center’s website and social media platforms or reading the monthly newsletter.
“The four interns have touched almost every aspect of our digital production” said Dembecki, “from graphics creation to formatting web pages, to writing promotional copy and creating the newsletter itself.”
“It’s super important to build these versatile skills early,” said Greenwood, “I love that I have a more holistic understanding of the process from start to finish now. I feel like it makes me a more capable journalist to be able to create my own web pages and graphics for my articles as well as self promote them on social media. Potential future employers I’ve met in my search for a post-graduation job also seem to value this experience.”
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The internship, like all other Ethics Center programs, has been online this year. “Despite being a virtual internship, no two days have been the same,” said Airhart. “Working so closely with the team keeps each day new and has made me more confident in my communication in an online work environment. Whenever I need help on a project I know I can go to another intern for help because each intern brings a unique set of applicable skills and is happy to do a little bit of every position.”
Dibble commented on the value of the important work done by the intern team: “The Ethics Center and its incredible staff provide hundreds of tools, resources, and programs to help individuals and organizations make decisions that care for others. All of these materials would be of little value if they weren’t widely distributed and easily accessible--this team brings their energy everyday to help us do just that.”
Intern images by Katherine Chen ’22