While most students last summer were relaxing or working, junior Erick Espinoza was sweating out an internship in Arizona.
“The heat, it's insane,” Espinoza said. “The days would be 120 degrees.’
Espinoza was one of five students in the Department of Criminal Justice who engaged in a paid summer internship involving research. Espinoza and graduate student Daisha Ingram spent 10 weeks at the Department of Homeland Security Center for Accelerating Operational Efficiency at Arizona State University in Tempe.
The two conducted research on disaster telemedicine. Disaster telemedicine involves using technology and artificial intelligence to offer remote medical help to locations experiencing hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis or other emergencies.
The two students in North Carolina Central University (NCCU) reached out to emergency managers across North Carolina, collected contact information and sent out surveys.
“I learned how to properly communicate with people so they are willing to hear what you say,” Espinoza said. “How to find the most accurate information, understand frameworks, analysis and how to create a presentation.”
Ingram found the research of personal interest.
“My family is from the Caribbean,” she said. “They were hit with multiple hurricanes. If we have (disaster telemedicine), we probably could have helped them a lot more.”
During their research, Ingram found that many emergency management agencies do not have disaster telemedicine in their emergency plans.
Their research will be used for an article and to create a documentary. On a personal level, the two found their summer research useful
“Hopefully when the research is published, it will make me more employable,” said Ingram.
“It opened my eyes,” Espinoza said. “I never thought you could work as a criminal justice major in a research capacity.”
Julien Muhammad, Ph.D., an assistant professor and former consultant to the Department of Homeland Security, who accompanied Ingram and Espinoza to Arizona, suggests the internships offered a variety of benefits to the students. Those include adding skills – writing, critical thinking – developing contacts that might lead to referrals or perhaps a job and transferable skills in research.
Population Research
Just up the road at Duke University, Le’Monna Cox, a senior, took part in a summer internship at the Population Research Institute at Duke University.
While there, Cox heard from people in the population research field, learned about basic tools of research and conducted research of her own.
“I was looking at how police shootings had a spillover effect on the health of Black Americans,” Cox said.
She took online statistics from police departments in Durham County and conducted statistical analysis.
“Because Black Americans are exposed to or have had family members who have been killed or know someone who have been killed, the stress they hold can cause illness and effect their mental health,” Cox said.
Cox’s goal is to earn a doctorate at Cornell University.
“I hope this will make me stand out so that when I apply to a Ph.D. program, I will have this backing me up, a mentor backing me up and knowledge backing me up,” she said.
Drugs and Covid’s Role
Tailah Jeanty, a junior, took part in an internship at the Research Institute for Scholars of Equity (RISE) with the School of Education. Her research was about “academic motivation and the level of concentration undergraduate students are lacking due to drug use and abuse and how Covid played a role.”
“I was passionate about it after returning for my senior year of high school,” Jeanty said. “I wanted to get into the nitty gritty about why they use drugs.”
She created a survey she distributed to friends at colleges around the United States. She plans to geographically narrow her focus to students at Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and NCCU but expand her survey to 150 students.
