{"id":159539,"date":"2025-08-05T10:33:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T10:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/merging-academics-with-real-world-tangible-experiences-penn-today\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T10:33:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T10:33:04","slug":"merging-academics-with-real-world-tangible-experiences-penn-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/merging-academics-with-real-world-tangible-experiences-penn-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Merging academics with real-world, tangible experiences – Penn Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

4 min. read
Rising fourth-year Sarah Usandivaras Klaehn has been gathering work experience at Penn along with her studies. She has created social media content as an intern at the Arthur Ross Gallery<\/span><\/a>, researched and written about misinformation as a fellow at FactCheck.org<\/span><\/a>, and is working as an executive intern for Women\u2019s Campaign International<\/span><\/a>. a nonprofit founded by one of her Penn professors.
A double major in political science and communications in the College of Arts & Sciences<\/span><\/a>, this summer Usandivaras is gaining new experience off campus as a marketing and communications intern with the international nonprofit Girls Inc.<\/span><\/a> at its headquarters in Manhattan. Founded 160 years ago, Girls Inc. is a leadership organization with programs in the United States and Canada.
\u201cI was drawn to Girls Inc. because it\u2019s an organization that provides outreach and mentorship to thousands of young girls,\u201d Usandivaras says. Pointing to her experience as a volunteer teacher in her hometown of Asunci\u00f3n, Paraguay, she says, \u201cI know firsthand the importance of having a mentor and having a teacher or someone who believes in you.\u201d
Born in New York City and raised in Paraguay, Usandivaras is a Benjamin Franklin Scholar<\/span><\/a>, a Penn Scholars program that draws from the four undergraduate schools and encourages integration across academic disciplines. She found this summer\u2019s Girls Inc. opportunity through the Robert A. Fox Leadership Fellowship<\/span><\/a> program and received additional summer funding through the Robert K. Johnson (RKJ) Integrated Studies Program<\/span><\/a>, the School of Arts & Sciences<\/span><\/a>\u2019 section of Benjamin Franklin Scholars<\/span><\/a>. The additional RKJ funding was administered by Penn\u2019s Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships<\/span><\/a>.
At Girls Inc. Usandivaras reports to Liz Velez, director of marketing and communications. \u201cSarah plays an important role in amplifying our message and increasing awareness of our work,\u201d Velez says. \u201cHer work helps us connect more deeply with our supporters, partners, and participants.\u201d
Usandivaras has been drafting communications and messaging and researching experiences by the girls. \u201cShe supports the development of social media content, authors blog posts, contributes to our newsletters, and helps us highlight stories of Girls Inc. participants in compelling and authentic ways,\u201d Velez says.
For a blog post, Usandivaras collaborated with one of the girls chosen as a \u201cbrand ambassador\u201d to write about her favorite experiences. Another piece for the nonprofit\u2019s national newsletter involved interviewing girls who went to Washington, D.C., to meet with the Girls Inc. public policy team and visit with members of Congress.
The nonprofit has hosted interns from Penn for years, a partnership started under the tenure of the former chief executive officer, Judy Vrendenburgh, a Penn alum, Velez says.
\u201cWe\u2019re always impressed by the caliber of students we receive from Penn, and Sarah has been no exception,\u201d Velez says. \u201cInternships like this one not only provide valuable support to our team but also help us build lasting connections with young leaders who care deeply about the world and advancing our mission.\u201d In return for real-world experience in the nonprofit sector Penn student interns bring \u201cfresh ideas, strong academic training, and a desire to make a difference,\u201d Velez says.
Usandivaras says experiences at Penn in the classroom and her internships \u201chave really prepared me for working in a nonprofit and public service in general. It\u2019s rewarding when I\u2019m able to tell my supervisors at Girls Inc. about something that I learned in my communications class and how that could impact our messaging.\u201d
Working at the Arthur Ross Gallery through Penn\u2019s Summer Humanities Internship Program<\/span><\/a> the summer after her second year, she learned about content creation for social media, taking over the Instagram account. \u201cIt was my true introduction into marketing and communications where I was really given creative liberty to understand what I was passionate about and what I wanted to do,\u201d she says. She has since served as chair of the Gallery\u2019s student advisory board for the past two years.
Last year, inspired by a course she took taught by Kathleen Hall Jamieson<\/span><\/a> of the Annenberg School for Communication<\/span><\/a>, she became an Undergraduate Fellow at FactCheck.org. As a Fellow, her primary role was fact checking and writing articles about misinformation in political coverage. She also was part of the team of students who fact-checked the 2024 political debates before the election. \u201cThat was a very interesting experience and really solidified the fact that I want to continue doing work with writing and research,\u201d she says.
And for the past two years Usandivaras has been working with the nonprofit Women\u2019s Campaign International, founded and led by Annenberg lecturer Marjorie Margolis<\/span><\/a>. Usandivaras plans to continue during her fourth year. This fall she will also serve as a teaching assistant in the Annenberg course Margolis is co-teaching with David Eisenhower<\/span><\/a> titled The First 100 Days. Eisenhower is the advisor for Usandivaras\u2019s honors thesis in Annenberg\u2019s Communications and Public Service Program concentration<\/span><\/a>.
Usandivaras says she\u2019s benefitted from taking classes with professors who are experts in their field. \u201cPenn is a very special place and merges research and academics with real world, tangible experiences and lessons that have really been helpful to me in in my career development.\u201d
Louisa Shepard<\/a>
In Senegal, the ambitious Dakar Greenbelt project seeks to create an extensive network of ecological infrastructure in and around the city to sustainably address environmental concerns and enhance urban life. With support from David Gouverneur and Ellen Neises, Ph.D. candidate Rob Levinthal in the Weitzman School of Design led two courses that included a field trip to Dakar, that culminated in students presenting their visions for parts of the Greenbelt.
(Image: Courtesy of Chaowu Li)
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Dec 12, 2024 <\/p>\n

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4 min. read Rising fourth-year Sarah Usandivaras Klaehn has been gathering work experience at Penn along with her studies. She has created social media content as an intern at the Arthur Ross Gallery, researched and written about misinformation as a fellow at FactCheck.org, and is working as an executive intern for Women\u2019s Campaign International. a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":159540,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}