Jonathan Carinci, 24, is a big believer in internships. “Sometimes, you don’t really know for sure what you want to do until you’ve been exposed to the working environment,” he said. “That’s why I came back to Daytona State when I found out the Environmental Science Technology program was being introduced.”
Carinci earned an associate of arts degree at Daytona State after graduating from Spruce Creek High School in 2008. Rather than jump immediately into his baccalaureate degree studies, he took time out to explore his career interests. “It was time well-spent,” he said. He found that a second associate degree at Daytona State, in Environmental Science Technology, gave him the hands-on field experience he was seeking, along with a critical focus on data-gathering and research.
In fact, before completing his AS degree, Carinci is rounding out his internships performing air quality sampling with the Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection and with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, which provides financial and technical assistance to local farmers and ranchers to voluntarily put conservation into practice.
Earlier in the program, Carinci earned a weeklong internship at the world-renowned Smithsonian Marine Station in Ft. Pierce, doing field work in the northern Indian River Lagoon, helping to collect marine invertebrates from different locations and learning various methods of field sampling. “It was a great experience,” he said. “We were out on the lagoon collecting samples on the first day.”
As for the future, he plans to pursue a bachelor’s degree in an environmental science-related
discipline, ideally while he is employed in the field. For now, he’s already got his
foot in the door. He’s been invited to return to the Smithsonian this summer for a
three-month paid internship as a research assistant.
###
{May 14, 2014}
