New York Epsilon Emma Prescott had an exciting summer as an intern for Design Museum Boston, a nomadic museum with pop-up exhibits around the city. She is in her junior year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute studying Design Innovation in Society and Business Management, so the ability to find a unique internship that fit her studies was an incredible experience for Emma.

As the museum did not have a physical home, Emma was part of working through a different type of business model. She worked on how to bring in new museum members as well as retain current museum members. She assisted in hosting events for the members as well as facilitating presentations and workshops for corporate companies and potential sponsors.

During her internship, the museum was focusing on playgrounds and child development through play. They set up more than 40 cases around the world of how children play – how they interact and learn and how they incorporate safety, liability and risk management into play. Additionally, the museum hosted workshops for kids and had them explain what “play” is to them.

Another aspect of the internship was assisting in a three-day design competition sponsored by the museum. Teams were asked to brainstorm and create a prototype solution for an underutilized city space that lay below a major highway. The space is near a three-lane road and a parking lot which people avoid due to the difficulty of crossing the intersection. In fact, people often walk 20 minutes out of their way to go around this space in order to catch public transportation on the T-Train. The goal was to make the space useable, safer and more inviting. A go-to space versus avoiding it. The competition drew architects, financial people, and many other different industries to see what teams were doing.

During the competition, Emma was able to network with many people and hear their points of view about why they were doing what they do. Furthermore, Emma saw first-hand engineers branching out and networking across different disciplines. Connections like these help Emma navigate what she could do in her future professional career. The possibilities are endless!