TCNJ

6 UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH, INTERNSHIPS, AND FIELD EXPERIENCE The College of New Jersey excels at preparing students to succeed in graduate school and their careers. A key to our success is the fact that the education we offer includes abundant opportunities to conduct mentored research and gain meaningful experience through internships and other work in the field. Here are but a few examples of this in action this year. SURVIVING THE STORM Students in Professor Matt Bender's class spent part of the spring semester at the Jersey shore. But they weren't soaking in the sun, they were absorbing history. As part of Bender's Hurricane Sandy Oral History Seminar, his 18 students were charged with conducting interviews with people who were in the path of the hurricane. The narratives that they compiled are being published online as part of the college's Hurricane Sandy Oral History Project, which serves as a living testament to the power of the storm and the impact that it had on the state and its people. "This is the largest collection of New Jersey Hurricane Sandy interviews that I know of," said Bender. "They represent a wide range of experiences—residents, first responders, government officials—as well as a geographic reach from Hoboken to Island Beach State Park." Bender's students conducted 68 interviews, which will be combined with 30 that were conducted in the fall of 2013 by students in his First Seminar Program. The narratives are archived online at hurricanesandy.pages.tcnj.edu. A FLAIR FOR FASHION MARKETING Business majors Tracy Kaplan '15, Stephanie Menakis '15, and Jenna Nerger '15 spent the summer before their senior year interning at PVH Corp., the company that owns brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, IZOD and Van Heusen. Although they were assigned to different offices, the trio worked together to develop a Campus Brand Recognition program, which included harnessing social media, building relationships with campus clubs as brand ambassadors, and organizing pop-up shops on campuses to put brands directly in the hands of their target audience. The quality of their work earned them a personal audience with the CEO of Tommy Hilfiger USA, Gary Sheinbaum, and two vice presidents who were eager to learn how the group's plan could successfully reach a large segment of their target audience. The trio walked away from that two-hour meeting with real-deal experience, a sneak peek at the spring 2015 collection, and high- powered connections as they start to look at careers.

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