More Than an Internship: Inside Whitman’s Inaugural Summer in Seattle

Phil Marr, Whitman’s Seattle-based Director for Employer Engagement, led the first cohort of Summer in Seattle—a program that connects students to one of the nation’s most dynamic job markets. Here, Marr reflects on an inspiring summer with an engaged group of Whitties in the city.

When Whitman College’s Career and Community Engagement Center staff started thinking about launching the Summer in Seattle program, we knew we wanted it to be more than a group of Whitman students coming to the city, completing internships and research experiences, and then heading home.

The internship was always going to be an important part of the experience. But we wanted to build something robust around it.

Over 11 weeks, the first Summer in Seattle brought together internships and research with professional development, alumni connections, networking and opportunities for students to experience Seattle together. Our hope was that students would leave with more than another line on their resume. We wanted them to build relationships, explore possibilities, develop confidence and begin to see themselves not just as college students but as early professionals.

Seattle business leaders—and members of Whitman’s Board of Trustees—were early advocates of Summer in Seattle and helped build momentum by creating paid internship opportunities for Whitman students. Special thanks to Aaron Perrine ’99, Partner at Trilogy Search Partners, Jonathan Sposato ’89, Founder and acting Editor-in-Chief of JoySauce, and Charles Nelson ’83, who created an internship at a financial tech startup. 

Their involvement reflects the kind of alumni partnership we hope to continue building—Whitman graduates and leaders opening doors, creating meaningful immersive learning experiences and helping more students see Seattle as a place where they can begin building their careers.

Creating these connections between our students, alumni, and employers is at the heart of my work in Seattle. Looking back on our first Summer in Seattle, what excites me most is seeing those opportunities take shape and watching our students step into them and grow along the way.

From Students to Early Professionals

The first Summer in Seattle cohort—more than a dozen students—spent the summer working and conducting research across a wide range of fields and organizations, from technology, finance and biomedical research to public health, conservation and nonprofit work.

Mathematics-Statistics major Ruth Chane ’28, for example, spent her summer with Osborne Construction Company, where she used artificial intelligence to address real workplace challenges. She developed AI-powered tools to automate processes that had previously required significant manual work, including a workflow that could turn a process that took days into minutes.

But what stood out in Ruth’s reflection wasn’t simply what she built. It was how the experience changed the way she saw herself.

“Because of Summer in Seattle, I can see myself much more clearly as someone who belongs in professional and technical spaces,” she says.

That idea of belonging in professional spaces was something we thought about a lot throughout the summer.

For many students, an internship is one of the first times they are navigating a workplace every day—learning a new organizational culture, figuring out expectations, communicating with a supervisor, asking for help and taking initiative.

Summer in Seattle gave students a place to work through those experiences together.

Learning From One Another

Every Tuesday evening, we brought the cohort back together to talk over their experiences. Early in the summer, those conversations often focused on workplace culture and professional expectations. As the weeks went on, the questions began to change: What am I learning? What skills am I developing? What am I discovering about myself? And eventually: How do I talk about this experience, and what might it tell me about what I want to do next?

One of the most meaningful things to watch was students realizing that they weren’t the only ones trying to figure these things out.

Ahmed Tandia ’27, a Computer Science major from Auburn, Washington, who interned at Microsoft, reflected on how valuable it was to talk openly about challenges at work and discover that other students were experiencing some of the same things.

“I felt like I wasn’t alone in this,” he says.

I think that captures something important about the cohort model. Students were learning from supervisors, alumni and professionals, but also from one another. They could compare experiences across very different workplaces, ask questions, share challenges and recognize that there isn’t one definition of what a successful internship—or career—has to look like.

Seattle itself also became part of the learning experience.

Natalie Fearn ’27, a Psychology major from Stockton, California, spent her summer with The Washington Bus, working in politics for the first time. Her internship required her to canvas, approach people she had never met and start conversations with individuals from many different backgrounds. At first, that pushed her outside of her comfort zone. Over time, she became more confident.

Living and working in Seattle also brought another kind of growth. Natalie learned to navigate public transportation, move around a new city independently and become more comfortable trying things she had not done before.

“Because of the Summer in Seattle program, I became more confident, independent and involved as a citizen,” she says.

That kind of learning can be difficult to recreate in a classroom.

Building Connections in Seattle

Another major part of the summer was helping students build relationships with Whitman alumni and other professionals throughout the Seattle area. Rather than relying on one large networking event, we intentionally created multiple opportunities to make those connections.

Students shared meals and conversations with alumni and trustees, connected with professionals working across Seattle industries, participated in Whitties Helping Whitties events, and spent time at T-Mobile Park learning from Whitman alumni working behind the scenes with the Seattle Mariners.

One especially memorable evening brought the cohort together with Whitman alum, trustee and former NASA astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger ’97. Students heard about her path from Whitman to NASA, the choices she made along the way and the confidence it sometimes takes to say yes to an opportunity before knowing exactly where it will lead.

For Lilian Garcia Vargas ’27, a Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology major from Desert Hot Springs, California, who spent the summer conducting research with Fred Hutch Cancer Center and the University of Washington, that conversation was particularly meaningful.

“Hearing her share her journey from Whitman to flying aboard the space shuttle Discovery was especially inspiring as a woman in STEM,” Lilian says.

Lilian’s summer also demonstrated why relationships are such an important part of this program. Through her research experience, she developed new skills in conducting a systematic review, organizing scientific literature and reflecting more intentionally on her work. Through Summer in Seattle, she also learned how to ask a supervisor for feedback and build professional relationships that could continue beyond the summer.

She finished the experience with alumni connections she believes can help as she explores future laboratory and industry opportunities.

Those are the kinds of connections we hoped students would begin developing.

Networking can sometimes sound transactional—meet someone, exchange information, make a contact. We wanted students to experience something different. Relationship-building happens one conversation at a time. Each opportunity to introduce yourself, ask a thoughtful question, talk about what you are working on, follow up with someone or hear how another person navigated their career makes the next conversation a little easier.

Over the course of the summer, it was amazing to see students’ confidence grow.

More Than a Summer Experience

Throughout the program, it became clear that growth was not limited to career preparation. Students explored Seattle together, built friendships and became a community. They talked about the good days at their internships and the difficult ones, shared what they were learning and helped one another think through what came next.

For me, that is one of the biggest lessons from our first Summer in Seattle.

Immersive learning is powerful because students get the opportunity to take what they are learning at Whitman and put it into practice through meaningful work. But the learning becomes even richer when we give them space to reflect on that work, relationships that help them understand where it might lead and a community navigating the experience alongside them.

As we look ahead, we hope to grow the next cohort, involve even more alumni and employer partners, expand the range of internships and research opportunities available to students, and continue connecting Whitman students with the professional community throughout the greater Seattle area.

At the same time, we want to hold on to what made this first summer special.

We want students to leave Seattle with stronger professional skills, meaningful relationships, broader career awareness, greater clarity about what they might want to pursue, and a better understanding of how their Whitman education can translate across different industries, organizations and career paths.

We want them to feel more comfortable and confident walking into professional spaces and recognizing that they belong there.

And we want them to have had a great summer—exploring a new city, building friendships, taking some chances and returning to Whitman excited about what might come next.

That, to me, is what Summer in Seattle is really about.