Name: Debbie Lee
Class Year: 2024
Major: Psychology
Minor: Data Science
Hometown: Seoul, Korea
Internship Organization: Library & Information Technology Services (LITS) at ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥
Job Title: Digital Technology Intern
Location: ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥, PA
Collaborating with Career and Civic Engagement, I was provided a digital technology internship (DTI) opportunity from Library and Information Technology Services (LITS) at ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥. As a DTI intern, I engaged in several different projects to improve the accessibility and inclusiveness of physical and digital spaces in ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥. This internship had two main projects: the assistive technology project and the Makerspace project.
Assistive technologies are equipment, software programs, or products that promote participation and accessibility for everyone regardless of gender, age, race, or disability. To enable the inclusion of the ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ community, other interns and I contributed to creating a database for apps that support community members’ mental health, studying, reading, and time management. We had to figure out how to build a database from scratch and include a ‘search by category' section that could lead users to sub-categories and information about individual apps. By exploring different software and CSS programs, we encountered difficulties since we had limited time and resources. Moreover, developers should think about the maintenance of a database by different people, which led us to think about not only the appearance of the frontend page of a database, but also the architecture of the backend. In order to create a functional and easy-to-use database within ten weeks, we built the data structures and connected the backend with the frontend using Airtable and Pory, which are intuitive programs to store information and retrieve data. Now, ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ community members can easily search assistive applications they need on the assistive technology webpage, utilizing a search engine and category functions while the backend database is easily edited, added, and maintained.
The other project that I conducted was to accelerate the accessibility of the ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ Makerspace. The main goals were to reconfigure the structure of the Makerspace and to build its digital website to provide community members a digital and technical learning environment where they can easily and freely explore design-thinking, creativity, and self-expression. As the Makerspace is going to open to the ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ community from the fall semester of 2022, other interns and I had to plan many different tasks to achieve the goals given the resources, time, and limitations with the space and storage. Here, project management was a facilitator to enable team members to understand the structure of projects, tasks to do, and the future goals they have to ultimately accomplish and promote active communication. Using Airtable, which is a feature to manage different projects with organized tools and intuitive templates, other interns and I developed plans to approach the goals together by labeling tasks and assigned priorities to improve efficiency and productivity.
Since the ultimate aim of the digital technology internship is to maximize practicality and accessibility for all ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ college members, I learned the importance of inclusive design thinking - a key concept in creating a process to include all members with different backgrounds. Therefore, with this concept, I strived to create digital and physical foundations where anyone can achieve their ambition regardless of gender, ethnicity, disability, race, and socioeconomic status.
Visit the Summer Internship Stories page to read more about student internship experiences.