Hendrix Student Spends Summer Interning with Wasps!
Hendrix College rising Junior, Jessa Thurman has be interning at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and is loving it. “The Smithsonian is amazing,” Thurman said. “We go on tours of different collections each week. For example, I’ve been through their gems and mineral collections, meteorites, mammals, and even took a class on scientific illustration. There are so many things going on here, from public programs to innovative research.”
Jessa has been working with wasps from The Joshua Tree National Park, sorting through samples and even identifying new ones. She has been working with some great entomologists too! “My supervisors are better than I could have dreamed, you can tell they are ridiculously intelligent and even though they’ve been studying these wasps for about 14 years they are really passionate about them and patient when teaching you simple identification techniques.”