{"id":25645,"date":"2024-09-20T23:03:03","date_gmt":"2024-09-21T05:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-colorado-students-present-internship-experience\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:22:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:22:56","slug":"southwest-colorado-students-present-internship-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-colorado-students-present-internship-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwest Colorado students present internship experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pinterns
Pinterns from 2023 on Main Street in Telluride (Photo by Kyle Wavra)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

High school juniors from South Colorado will share their summer internship experience on Tuesday at the Sheridan Opera House in Telluride.<\/p>\n

The event is open to the public. It will start with a reception at 5 p.m., and presentations begin at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n

For most of the students, these six weeks of full-time work in a new place was their first time away from home, and their first hands-on work experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was eye-opening,\u201d said Samantha Abate, a junior at Dolores High School who landed a marine biology internship in Santa Barbara, California, this summer.<\/p>\n

\"Samantha
Samantha Abate (left) holding a spiny starfish and sheep crab. (Photo courtesy Samantha Abate)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Kaylynn Quinonez from Montezuma-Cortez High School said flying to Georgia for her marine biology internship was her first time on an airplane. She summarized the experience in a blog post, which all the interns wrote in their time away: \u201cThe airplane was definitely less comfy than I had imagined,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

\"Kaylynn
Kaylynn Quinonez spent the summer in Tybee Island, Georgia (Photo courtesy Kaylynn Quinonez)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Telluride-based Pinhead Institute puts on the program. It was founded in 2001 by a local mother who wanted better science education for kids.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, they have a handful of opportunities for students interested in science, technology, engineering and math. One of these opportunities is their internship program.<\/p>\n

What they craftily call the Pinternship Program is for students the summer before their senior year to get experience in a STEM field they\u2019re interested in before they go to college.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are smart kids everywhere, but if you take them out of a small town and send them somewhere like Harvard or Yale, it might be kind of jarring if they\u2019ve never been anywhere,\u201d said Sarah Holbrooke, the executive director of Pinhead Institute. \u201cWe do this in part so that kids can get exposed to different cultures and also high-level academic research in advance, before they apply to college.\u201d<\/p>\n

Siena Parr, another student at Dolores High School, said before her internship in La Jolla, California, this summer, she had never been away from home for more than two weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe program lets younger students live on their own, manage their own money,\u201d said Parr. \u201cIt\u2019s great for independence and for confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quinonez echoed the point: \u201cI didn\u2019t realize how much a coffee could really cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parr said she worked in a lab studying neuroscience and got a lot of hands-on experience, more than she expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t treat me like a 17-year-old at all. There were some points where I was like, \u2018Are you sure you want me to do this\u2019,\u201d Parr said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

\"Siena
Siena Parr in the lab at her internship in California (Courtesy Siena Parr)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Pinhead Institute accepts roughly 25 students every year from Telluride, Dolores, Cortez, Ouray, Ridgeway, Montrose, Olathe, Norwood, Nucla, Naturita and Paradox.<\/p>\n

Holbrooke said they put it on at no cost to families that make $100,000 a year or less. Families who bring in between $100,000 to $300,000 are expected to pay for airfare and housing, and those making $300,000 a year or more are expected to pay the full cost of the program, about $8,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a great opportunity for kids whose parents haven\u2019t thought that this could possibly be a possibility,\u201d Holbrooke said.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s a great opportunity for kids to break out of their comfort zone, Quinonez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of times where people would turn things down cause they\u2019re a little scared, but it\u2019s a good time to, you know, get to know yourself and get to know the opportunities you have in the future,\u201d Quinonez said.<\/p>\n

The Pinhead Institute is a nonprofit. It usually brings in enough money the night of the intern presentations to fund the program for the next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have math-oriented interns up on stage at a whiteboard writing down how much, you know, as people are donating $20, $50, $100, $10,000, keeping track of the donations as they come in fast and furious in the room,\u201d Holbrooke said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe usually get close to funding that whole program in that room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parr and Abate agreed they\u2019d recommend the program to anyone interested \u2013 and have been. In addition to the work experience, they hadn\u2019t ever felt that kind of freedom.<\/p>\n

Anyone can come to the free event at the opera house. Students and families interested in the program should stay for the duration of the event, Holbrooke said.<\/p>\n

The next step would be to apply. The application goes live on the Pinhead Institute\u2019s website <\/a>on Nov. 22, the Friday before Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

Applicants will be interviewed in December and will know whether they got into the program by New Year\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever you\u2019re expecting, it\u2019ll be a little different from that,\u201d Parr said.<\/p>\n

For instance, Quinonez was interested in forensic psychology, yet her program was in marine biology. She said it was still a worthwhile time of growth and learning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was honestly a little scared of the ocean because I wasn\u2019t around it a lot,\u201d said Quinonez. \u201cA big thing I learned is that wildlife doesn\u2019t have to be as scary as it seems. Everyone\u2019s scared of jellyfish and sharks and everything that lives in the ocean but \u2026 once you learn more about them \u2026 they\u2019re not as scary as they seem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Quinonez plans to pursue forensic psychology, Holbrooke, the executive director of Pinhead Institute, emphasized that even if a student comes back with a total change of plans as far as college majors go, it\u2019s just as rewarding as reinforcing an interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel like we\u2019re a success if a kid goes off for the summer and comes back loving the thing they studied, and we also feel like we\u2019re a success if they go away and come back and say, \u2018I don\u2019t want to do that anymore,\u2019\u201d Holbrooke said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roughly 20 high school juniors will talk about their six weeks away from home, what they learned<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79031,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25645\/revisions\/79031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25645"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}