Internships & Community Service
AAERO hosts college interns from HBCUs in North Carolina, during the fall, spring, and summer. Some students earn college credit for community service with AAERO.
Internships are an important part of what we do. As students advance the AAERO-MQMH mission, they practice and build skills in ways that affect future opportunities.
Summer 2023
Atanas Nixon served as AAERO@MQMH SECU Fellows intern for Summer 2023. As a Fayetteville State University Business Administration major, her goals were to develop communication, marketing, and research skills. During the summer, she aided AAERO@MQMH in researching local demographics and cultures to support Black owned bookstores across North and South Carolina. Atanas also contributed to the Annual AAERO@MQMH 2023 Symposium where she presented on the importance of oral histories. By the end of her internship, Atanas developed a way to communicate her technical skills and previous projects to future employers.
Summer 2022
Fayetteville State University students, Kyrah Alston and Anazje Johnson, served as AAERO@MQMH interns, funded by the N.C. State Employees Credit Union. The interns presented some of their work at the 2022 AAERO Symposium at Melchor-Quick Meeting House. They chose excerpts from recorded interviews of African American elders who participated in “Conversations with Treasures of Our Heritage” and shared with the group passages that were relevant to the AAERO mission.
At the end of their internship, Cheryl Jefferson Page conducted a workshop for Ms. Johnson and Ms. Alston, which culminated in creation of their “vision boards,” as seen here.
Summer 2021
Nikkita Logan and Tyrik Williams were AAERO – MQMH interns during the summer of 2021. As social work majors at Fayetteville State University, Ms. Logan and Mr. Williams were driven to aid AAERO – MQMH in connecting with the local and global Black community. They researched Black organizations in the Fayetteville area to help AAERO – MQMH learn how to best serve the community’s educational and meeting space needs. Ms. Logan and Mr. Williams also contributed to the development and design of the current website, being careful to honor our history and vision for the future. These internships were funded by a grant from the NC State Employees Credit Union to Fayetteville State University.
Summer 2020
Jeffrey Thompson, a recent graduate of North Carolina Central University, interned in the summer of 2020. Mr. Thompson added demographic information, including race and ethnicity, to a database of nearly 1200 incarcerated people who participate in the Church of the Larger Fellowship Worthy Now prison ministry. To learn more about existing education programs for incarcerated people, view the PBS documentary, “College Behind Bars.”
2013
North Carolina Central University (NCCU) psychology majors, Briana Moore and Kayla Holland, interned in 2013. They assisted with the interview of NCCU Registrar, Dr. Jerome Goodwin who, as a child, was one of the first African Americans to attend an all-white school. This was part of the project Somebody Had To Do It. These interns earned credit for a Psychology course by completing this internship.
