Sarah Blow grew up on stage, spending her youth singing and dancing in plays.
This summer, the senior, Public Communication major, and Dance minor found a new way to stand in the spotlight.
Blow hosted The Vermont Economy Talks, a series of live-streamed interviews boiling heady economic topics into easy-to-understand ideas.
The online show, published in June and July by the Vermont Futures Project, came as part of her internship with the university’s Center for Research on Vermont. She was one of five student interns who worked with the initiative over the summer.
“Talking about economics can actually be pretty fun,” said Blow, a native of Glens Falls, NY.
She felt hesitant at the start of the internship; dissecting the state’s economic prospects each week for two months sounded dry.
But Blow found herself absorbed as she listened to power players and experts.
“I learned a lot about the Vermont economy and what the indicators of a successful economy are,” she said.
Interviewing leaders around Vermont — like representatives of Casella Waste Systems or state labor officials — gave her “a much greater understanding of how our state is functioning and how we can continue to improve.”
That’s what the show aimed to give viewers, too, and what the Vermont Futures Project wants to achieve more broadly.
Organized by the Vermont Chamber Foundation, the nonprofit initiative wants to put the economy at the center of conversations about the state’s future.
The project also wants to bring data into that discussion — something senior Japanese major Aidan Seipke achieved through his internship this summer.
The South Burlington native worked on animated graphics for episodes of the economic talk show.
You can see his handiwork on screen throughout the series: colored charts tracking demographic shifts, economic growth and more stretching and fading, rounding out the interviews in the background.
“I was most surprised about how important health care is to our economy and workforce in terms of employment,” he said.
Like Blow, he found his work more appealing than expected.
“I did learn that I find animating motion graphics for videos to be quite engaging,” Seipke said, adding that with the software skills he learned, he “realized that I can work fairly efficiently on these projects, at least in terms of basic 2D animation and graphics.”
The senior especially appreciated the close collaboration of Vermont Future’s Director Lori Smith.
“Sometimes we would be sending a lot of emails back and forth, and then one of us would just ask to call — I found that to be really helpful, and not something I would've expected from a supervisor who has so much on her plate already,” he said.
Jackson Baker, a junior English major, spent his summer internship writing for the Vermont Futures Project’s blog.
He researched health care, education and the workforce statewide, gaining “a much better understanding of the challenges that many Vermonters face on a day-to-day basis, which were often issues that I have never experienced myself,” he said.
The Essex Junction native was eager to write in a professional setting, far away from the academic prose he was used to in his coursework.
“It definitely showed me that this kind of work was something I would be interested in doing as a career, and having a team to work with was extremely helpful,” he said.
He too enjoyed learning from supervisors.
“Oftentimes, our conversations would spark up new ideas and connections that ended up finding their way into the final drafts,” he said. “It was super satisfying to have an idea click and change the direction of a piece that we were working on.”
Also working on the project during the summer were Owen Amsden, a Global Studies senior and Henry Chugh an English major.
The internships also presented some future career opportunities.
Blow, who runs her own online interview program, learned about one possible job during the show
The two Casella reps she interviewed asked her to get in touch about touring the company’s facility and career opportunities.
“I never pictured myself entering the waste management field,” she said. “But they were such great guests and their business is incredible, so I've definitely been considering their offer.”
The summer internships were part of the College of Arts & Sciences Communities of Practice intern program – students working under the direction of professionals in managed cohort experiences. The Vermont Futures team was overseen by UVM’s Maggie Richardson.
In the last four years, internships in the College of Arts & Sciences at UVM have increased sharply from about 250 a year to more than 700, partly because of the Communities of Practice model. The College has also increased summer intern funding, from $71,000 in 2020 to more than $200,000 in 2021. The students in Vermont’s Futures group all received summer scholarships to support their internships of about $3000.
“We believe that every student should have the opportunity to have at least one, if not multiple, internships during their time at UVM,” said William Falls, the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. “Internships provide essential life skills, preparing students for the work place and building the networks and skills they need to succeed.”
Falls said he is particularly proud of the summer scholarship programs that provide funding for students in unpaid or underpaid internships.
“We thought it essential to level the playing field to give every student regardless of their personal finances the chance to have an internship,” Falls said. “It must be part of their college career and education.”
Justin Trombly is a writer and reporter.