We would like to offer our sincerest thanks to the army of interns that have offered their time and talents to Pennsbury over the last 8 months.  Often volunteers don’t realize how much behind-the-scenes work happens at Pennsbury, and these 8 students have been invaluable in working on projects in all sorts of areas, in addition to giving tours and helping with special events!  Read on to hear about their adventures. 

Maggie Lee – A rising senior at the University of Delaware, Maggie spent her winter break last January working on ideas for revamping our walking tour and adding seasonal interpretive information.  We look forward to using her research in our new comprehensive visitor brochure, coming this fall.  

Kelly Cole – Kelly spent her spring semester internship as a graduate student from the University of the Arts working with Diane Nadler and our new exhibit.  Using her museum education skills, she developed a series of teacher activities for schools to incorporate into their field trips.  These activities will be featured in a teacher resource section on our newly redesigned website this fall. 

Ruth Lonvick – Another student from the University of the Arts, Ruth decided to incorporate her thesis work on gardens and educational programs into her summer internship with Mike Johnson.  In addition to helping with summer planting and garden maintenance, she researched and developed a wonderful interpretive signage system for the Kitchen Garden which we plan to implement this fall.  

Danielle Lehr – Danielle, an undergraduate student at West Chester University, was also in the gardens helping Mike and Ruth with planting, weeding, and lots of mowing!  She also assisted with Ruth’s plant research and started a new blog featurette, “The Country Life,” which can be read at this link: http://pennsburymanor.wordpress.com/category/the-country-life/ 

Lloyd Frisone – As our third graduate student from the University of the Arts, Lloyd wanted to use his museum communications training and assist Tabitha Dardes with Pennsbury’s public relations projects.  This included putting together a schedule of daily Facebook and Twitter posts with event updates, fun history facts, and a weekly promotional lottery.  He also developed a press kit for Pennsbury, worked on the 2011 brochure, developing some ideas for our new brochure design, and writing a press release for our exhibit award. 

Danielle Straub – Danni spent her summer off from the undergraduate program at the University of Pittsburgh learning about the secret world of Collections Care!  Her curatorial work with Todd Galle included writing acquisition recommendations, adding object photography to the files, developing exhibit scripting, and researching artifacts.  Some of her work on our maps was featured in the Volunteer Blog featurette “Exploring the Artifacts” – click the link to catch up on her work:  http://pennsburymanor.wordpress.com/category/exploring-the-artifacts/ . 

Joshua Martin – As Hannah Howard’s summer intern, Josh (an undergraduate student from Kutztown University) was asked to research and develop some ideas for revamping and growing the Youth Volunteering Program at Pennsbury.  In addition to helping with the summer camps and volunteer picnic, Josh learned about current program strengths and weaknesses, visited other sites to learn about innovative techniques, and compiled background research.  His final report and recommendations offer some exciting possibilities that we will work to implement next spring and summer with Josh’s continuing involvement. 

Jennifer Martin – Apparently we didn’t scare her away during her first summer at Pennsbury, because Shippensburg University student Jenn was back again this year!  In addition to several small projects around the Visitor Center, Jenn once again took charge of our Summer Camps and they were a smashing success, almost double the campers from 2010.  Along with a continuing word-of-mouth campaign from the happy parents, we hope to really promote our 2012 camps and give Jenn even MORE campers to wrangle!