ALUMNA FROM 1993 MENTORS ALUMNA FROM 2017
Yvette Girard ’93 is a scientist at Cerus, a biomedical products company focused in the field of blood transfusion safety. Lucy Vaughn ’17 is in her sophomore year at Wake Forest University majoring in Engineering. Lucy was a full-time intern for Cerus in the summer of 2018 working directly with Yvette. Here are reflections on the experience:
FROM YVETTE:
Tell us a little bit about Lucy’s internship with your company.
Tell us a little bit about Lucy’s internship with your company.
Lucy applied for this position in the spring. We get summer interns every year and usually there is some groaning because it’s a lot to take on in addition to your normal work load. My supervisor circulated her resume and when I saw that she went to CPS I said, "I'll take her!” I didn't have a project for her, but I was excited to come up with something interesting for her to work on.
It was a really intense three months. Lucy was there forty hours a week as a full-time employee. I wanted her to learn skills in virology, including cell culture and plaque assay, which are used to measure how much virus we have. I had a little experiment set up for her, where she would take a virus and assay it three different ways. Because the methods we use are really different and the accuracy changes a little bit depending on the assay, it’s an important comparison. I also wanted her to learn how to use the basic tools of a microbiologist like pipettes and tissue culture plates and other equipment. Just getting familiar with the tools of a laboratory is so important in being able to execute a study.
Did you have the opportunity to get to know Lucy?
We had a lot of opportunity to chat during our work together. She was such a joy to have around. One of the things we did bond over was the when we first started CPS. We had very similar experiences acclimating our freshman year, so it was interesting to see how that hasn’t changed. We were both on the volleyball team and we both swam, so we talked a lot about that.
As an Engineering major Lucy was learning a new set of skills by working in your lab. Did you feel like she enjoyed the work?
Going into this, I was like, "Maybe I could convert her to wanting to become a Microbiologist or switching to a Microbiology major in college!” At the end, it didn't happen, but it was really interesting to see how much she learned along the way.
Did you have expectations about Lucy because she went to College Prep?
The training you go through at CPS is so intense; I think it makes them grow up a little faster. I think CPS kids are more prepared for college and used to the rigor of collegiate-level classes. I knew I was getting an intern who could take on anything. And she did. She did such a fantastic job!
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Lucy at Cerus
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FROM LUCY:
What surprised you about the workforce?
What surprised you about the workforce?
This was my first internship. I was surprised by how much responsibility they actually gave me and by how much I was accepted into the culture of the company. I found my place, and figured out my role, and really had specific things to do. This was really exciting, and different than the experiences that I’d heard about for internships.
I got to figure out what I wanted to do, and was taught a lot of things. It wasn't just being told what to do, the people there took the time to explain why, which was a really helpful way for me to figure things out.
Yvette said she was hoping to convert you to microbiology. Were you tempted to change lanes?
It's kind of interesting, because before the internship I thought I wanted to be a chemical engineer. Over the summer I found that I actually really liked microbiology, but I also still like engineering. Now I'm leaning more towards the biomedical field where I could potentially combine microbiology and engineering.
What were the biggest lessons you learned from this experience?
I learned a lot about being in a workplace and about the skills needed in a real job like communicating, crafting emails, etc. It taught me a lot about how to interact with people. I made presentations, did research, and read a lot about microbiology, which I hadn't had that much exposure to before. The internship definitely taught me how to be efficient and how to present what I've learned to other people. All really useful.
It was also great to have an adult mentor in Yvette, especially as she also went to College Prep. I had not had that before, other than teachers. Talking to her about how she got to where she was, and all the different steps that she took to figure out what they wanted to do, was a great experience.
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mens conscia recti
a mind aware of what is right