This summer, political science major Amanda Wu is interning part-time at two locations in Cleveland: Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) and Global Cleveland. Amanda is going to be a junior this fall.

Read on to hear what Amanda has to say about her summer experience.

Position Title and Description: 

• At GCP, I am the Project Management Intern for the Construction, Utilities, Buildings, and Equity (C.U.B.E.) initiative of the Equity & Inclusion team at Greater Cleveland Partnership. I help manage and track all the various programs and projects that are going on in the C.U.B.E. initiative, as well as tackling some administrative work (the favorite past-time of every intern, ever). At GCP, I’m currently working on compiling a playbook for the C.U.B.E. Symposium — the C.U.B.E. initiative’s keystone event and one of GCP’s major events dedicated to advancing equity and inclusion in the construction sector.
• Over at Global Cleveland, I’m the Programming Intern. I mainly work on projects for the Program Director, but I also help the other staff members as well. I work on everything from administrative work to an intern’s second favorite past-time, research and data entry. Under the Program Director, I have a couple of projects where my focus is researching people — from local leaders of various ethnic communities here in Cleveland to Consulates and Honorary Consulates in the Greater Cleveland region. I also worked with the Research Coordinator to use data from the census bureau to estimate the geographical movements of foreign-born residents in the Cleveland-Elyria Metropolitan Area. The objective for that particular project was to estimate the retention rate for foreign-born citizens in the Greater Cleveland region.

Importance to Major and Career: 

• Both experiences furthered my understanding of economic development within the Greater Cleveland region, especially considering the expansive practices and measures in recent history. Going into these internships, I had a vague idea of what economic development entailed and what it may shape up to be in the future. I had an even more unclear idea of what role the international community plays in this vision. Right now, I have a clearer image of what role this may play in my future. Specifically, the legal aspect of immigration has piqued my interest in particular and I am now considering law school as an option.

Best part of the experience so far:

•  I think the best part of my experience is having the creative freedom to draft ideas that may actually be implemented — whether that’s through management ideas for GCP or creating a program for Global Cleveland. I’m currently working on creating a program that may help mitigate the language barrier faced by many of the immigrants, refugees, and international citizens, as well as bridge the divide between higher education institutions and the Cleveland community.