Keeping busy: how Lehigh students spent summer break

Joshua Bower

Joshua Bower, ‘25, spent his summer at home with his family in Limerick, Pennsylvania. Bower said he took multiple trips to the Jersey Shore, as well as trips to Philadelphia and New York. 

Bower said he worked a part-time job at a local restaurant a few days a week but left time for family and friends. He said he normally would have worked more, but he took some time off this summer because he wanted to enjoy his time at home before the semester began.

Marissa Hastings

Marissa Hastings, ‘22, lived at home in Tennessee this summer. Hastings was able to travel to New York City, as well as to Sedona, Arizona, where she saw family she had not seen since before the pandemic.

Hastings said a defining part of her summer was participating in the Iacocca International Internship Program in Vienna, Austria. Hastings worked remotely at Impact Hub Vienna as a data analysis and market research intern, which consisted of analyzing multiple years of survey responses from the company’s members and finding patterns amongst the responses.

“The working atmosphere and community at the organization was probably the most impactful for me,” Hastings said. “It set a precedent for how a work environment should be, and the people I worked with were inclusive and uplifting while continuing to offer constructive feedback.”

Elora Marvasi

Elora Marvasi, ‘22, also participated in the Iacocca International Internship Program. Marvasi’s internship was based out of Dublin, Ireland, at  Impacter, a nongovernmental organization which publishes news content about social innovation. Marvasi helped create a partner map of other organizations the company could work with to help expand their reach and conducted interviews with organizations that had won awards for their work. 

Marvasi said the main takeaway from the summer experience is the connections she was able to make with her coworkers and supervisor in Ireland, as well as with the Iacocca staff. 

“The program was one of the highlights of my entire Lehigh experience,” Marvasi said. 

Lizzy Kunkov 

Lizzy Kunkov, ‘23, participated in the Lehigh@NasdaqCenter Startup Academy, which consisted of a remote internship with a startup in the Silicon Valley and ended with a week in San Francisco. Kunkov worked with Experiential Insight, a company that works to enforce and develop “soft skills” in employees who work for Fortune 500 companies. 

“The program kick-started a new interest in the startup environment for me,” Kunkov said. 

Kunkov said during the week in San Francisco, students toured Silicon Valley companies, such as Google and Apple and listened to speakers, such as Amy Weaver, the president and chief financial officer of Salesforce. Weaver is on the Board of Trustees at Lehigh.  

Zach Levin

Zach Levin, ‘22, completed an internship at Simon Quick Advisors, a management and financial planning firm, at their headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey.

Levin said the company gave him the opportunity to complete his own projects, one of which was an investment research project on renewable energy, which he drafted a report on for his team.  

Levin said he originally became interested in his internship through a connection with a Lehigh alumni and recommends that students take advantage of the Lehigh alumni network in their job search. 

Meredith Purcell

Meredith Purcell, ‘25, said she spent time at her family’s summer home in Florida before starting at Lehigh this fall. Purcell said her family took day trips to Florida beaches on their boat in their free time.

“I took advantage of having no summer reading and relaxed before school,” Purcell said. 

When she was home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Purcell was a waitress at a local restaurant. 

Liz Ingraham

Liz Ingraham, ‘24, participated in the Data for Impact Summer Institute through the Mountaintop Summer Experience. Ingraham said she worked with a team of people with various academic backgrounds and picked up new skills — one being coding in Python. Ingraham said one of the highlights of her experience was coding a model of a COVID-19 spike protein.

Margo Courtney

Margo Courtney, ‘25, split her time between her home in Northern Virginia and travelling to Florida, the Outer Banks and Virginia Beach. 

Courtney also spent two weeks volunteering at Summer’s Best Two Weeks summer camp in Pennsylvania. 

Courtney said she connected with her roommate over the summer about preparing to come to Lehigh in the fall.