Summer Internships

Ashley Broadhurst

Environmental science senior Ashley Broadhurst completed a 12-week internship at the Houston office of Terracon Consultants Inc., a 100% employee-owned consulting engineering firm.

As an environmental planning intern, Broadhurst worked directly with clients to generate and execute proposals based on their needs. Field work, including wetland delineations, threatened and endangered species surveys, as well as archeological field tests, was a key component of the internship. Broadhurst was then responsible for writing the subsequent reports outlining the findings and also created a wide array of preliminary data maps, such as topographic, LiDAR, National Wetland Inventory and soil maps.

“My favorite part of the internship was learning how the industry works on every level, whether that be the field work, the proposal and report writing, or the business development and finance-related aspects of client interaction,” Broadhurst said.

Broadhurst also credits Dr. I-Kuai Hung, SFA Lacy H. Hunt Professor of geospatial sciences, with encouraging her to learn ArcGIS Pro, as it greatly benefited her throughout the internship.

“I feel that my 12 weeks with Terracon greatly developed me both as a student and as a future environmental professional,” Broadhurst said. “I look forward to utilizing what I learned through graduation and beyond.”

Kristen McCaslin

Kristen McCaslin, a junior agriculture major, completed an 11-week internship with Dr. Erin Brown, SFA professor of agriculture, at the SFA Beef Center during the 2021 spring calving season.

Throughout the internship, McCaslin researched beef cattle reproduction while also monitoring the calving process. This included maintaining comprehensive records and completing thorough health evaluations of the calves following birth.

“Most importantly, I made sure the calf is healthy and able to nurse,” McCaslin said. “Some additional duties included assisting cows in calving by pulling calves, bottle and tube feeding calves, and monitoring veterinary-assisted care.”

Given McCaslin’s goal of becoming a veterinarian, she considers the hands-on nature of this internship and SFA’s agriculture program in general to be extremely valuable.

“SFA has done a great job at including ample amounts of hands-on experience for pre-veterinary students,” McCaslin said. “This experience will allow me to have a topic of discussion in my veterinary school interviews and allow my application to stand out. It is important to have reinforcement of knowledge outside of the textbook, and this internship has allowed me to grow my network of connections, agriculture-related terminology, and basic understanding of cattle operations.”

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Jake Speckhals

Urban forestry senior Jake Speckhals completed an internship with Redden Farms, a tree farm located north of Dallas.

Speckhals completed a host of duties to help ensure tree health and proper operations on the farm, including creating high-quality soil containing macro and micronutrients, pest control, plant propagation, installing irrigation and electrical lines to greenhouses, as well as habitat construction for waterfowl and largemouth bass.

“This experience has benefited my undergraduate career because I have gained a lot of practical skills and learned how to apply what I have learned in the forestry program,” Speckhals said. “My favorite part about the internship was the people I worked with and being outside.”

Summer Pritchett

Summer Pritchett, a senior horticulture major, completed a three-month internship with the Denver Botanic Gardens where she worked directly with the head horticulturalist for the Rock Alpine Garden Collection.

“I have learned quite a bit about Colorado and alpine plants, as well as the impacts of climate change and invasive plants on the environment,” Pritchett said. “This is important to my career because I have an interest in native and invasive plants.”

In addition to planting and caring for the diverse plant species within the collection, Pritchett also worked on the database for the gardens, entering photos of plants into the Denver Botanic Gardens database.

“My favorite part of the internship was going on the educational hikes and field trips where we learned about Colorado environments and native flora and fauna,” Pritchett said. “We also learned how to identify plants that are native to the Rocky Mountain Region, which was very interesting and an important skill.”

If you have news or images you would like to share, email Sarah Fuller, outreach coordinator, at fullersa@sfasu.edu.

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