On the Job: Nicole Bowen, BS ’26

Environmental science major Nicole Bowen, BS ’26, spent her summer as a science intern for AECOM, an infrastructure consulting firm. She worked under the environmental planning and permitting team, assisting with safe work and permit plans in the office and working on wetland delineations and site monitoring out in the field.

The Role:

Science Intern, AECOM 

Describe your internship in three emojis:

🥵 (sweating)

📈 (line graph)

🗣️(loud voice)

The Day-to-Day:

Every day is different. I’m in the office three days out of the week, but then some days I have field work. When I’m in the office, I talk to people to see what I can help with, like doing desktop environmental assessments. My exact projects always vary, but it's usually for an energy company doing environmental due diligence and something related to environmental permitting for infrastructure projects, the main clients being Constellation, PPL and PECO.

Go-to snack or drink that gets you through the day:

A Grapefruit Blossom Red Bull. For field work, it is beef jerky, because it's filling and has protein. 

My “I nailed it” moment:

At this one site that we went to to do field work, we had to count and find all of the trees that were previously planted. And the invasives were so tall, and everything was so grown that it was just really hard to find the cages. A lot of the trees were really stressed and it was really tough to find them. I think that I did a good job at keeping track of what we were finding and what species it was.I learned the species effectively and, toward the end, we were missing like seven, so we had to go back through the entire site and try to find the cages. And I had found one or two, which isn't that much, but there were only four or five that we had to find. And it was a big deal because we were in the field for eight hours.

Favorite part of your role:

I would say learning about all of the environmental policies and laws that people have to follow, and also the lack thereof of environmental policy. This internship has exposed me to how federal agencies and policy interact with the private sector and exposed me to what goes on behind the scenes. It showed me that environmental policy is really important. And I knew that, but it just really put it to the surface for me.

Fit check:

Tips for the next intern:

I would say to speak up when you don't know what somebody is talking about or when they're under the impression that you already know how to do something. It's not because they think you're a genius, it's just because they're so far into their job that they forget what it's like for a newbie. As soon as a question comes up, try to troubleshoot it yourself, but if you can't after 15 to 30 minutes, don't keep harping over it. People want you to ask questions!