SOM hosted 39 graduate and undergraduate students for its annual Winter Internship Week in January 2020. Organized by the SOM Women’s Initiative (SOMWI) since 2011, the program provides students pursuing careers in design with an immersive experience in the office environment. Complete with site visits, portfolio reviews, and presentations from senior designers, the Internship Week offers a 360-degree view of the design profession. Students were invited to spend the week in one of six SOM offices: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and London.
Throughout the week, these promising young designers shadowed professionals in architecture, interior design, urban planning, management, structural engineering, and communications and marketing. They also ventured out into their respective cities, joining architects on the project site for SOM’s new office renovation at 7 World Trade Center in New York City, Taylor Street Apartments and Little Italy Branch Library in Chicago, and 500 Folsom in San Francisco, to name just a few.
The students who participated in the 2020 Winter Internship Week were:
Chicago: Asiye Yukselen (Illinois Institute of Technology), Rebecca Greenberg (Columbia University), Jessica Duschean (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Madeleine Kern (University of Oregon), Ana Fiallo (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Ziyue Zhang (University of Texas, Austin), Alexandra Kawar (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Katrin Chandra (Northwestern University). The Chicago office also hosted students involved with two other industry groups, Arquitectos Chicago and the National Organization of Minority Architects: Gustavo Noriega (Arizona State University), Victor Fernandez Gill (Illinois Institute of Technology), Tomi Laja (Iowa State University), and Hauwa Mahwoud (Penn State University).
New York: Nicole Mae (University of Texas, Austin), Maya Jarrah (Carleton University), Yanxi Fu (Columbia University), Kania Thea (Cornell University), Morgan Frederick (Kennesaw State University), Fei Wang (New York School of Interior Design)
San Francisco: Ji Young Song (University of Illinois), Savannah Wu (Columbia University), Lingxin Feng (University of Pennsylvania), Ana Hernandez (University of Florida), Cloris Cai (Rice University), Rachel Smith (University of Tennessee), Keju Liu (Columbia University), Yuanyuan Wang (University of California, Berkeley), Emily Judge (Case Western Reserve University)
Los Angeles: Anna Lim (University of Pennsylvania), Livia Mello (University of Houston), Christina Shin (University of Southern California), Younglee Lee (University of Texas, Austin)
Washington, D.C.: Qingying Wang (Columbia University), Min Na (University of Maryland, College Park), Kayleen O’Brien (Syracuse University)
London: Antonia Walgenbach (Technical University of Braunschweig), Bunmi Adeoye (University of Nottingham), Patricia Sangalang (University of Sheffield), Shaheen Hussain (Welsh School of Architecture), Viktorija Mankeviciute (University of the Arts London)