By: Laura Villano, Publications Intern
Laura Villano, Publications Intern (Click to enlarge.)
The purpose of an internship is to benefit both the student and organization. For that reason, I believe my internship at ECS was a success. I gained valuable experience, new skill sets, and many new acquaintances, as well as benefitted the Society. My name is Laura Villano and I am a senior marketing major at The College of New Jersey. During my time at ECS, I worked as an intern for Beth Craanen in the publications department. When I first applied, I was thrilled by the idea of working for a nonprofit and trying to make a difference. The more I learned about ECS and its Free the Science campaign, the more I found myself bragging to my family and friends about the company I interned for.
During my time in the publications department, I performed many marketing duties for ECS’s various publications. The beginning of my internship focused mostly on writing-based projects. I created blog posts and emails regarding subscriptions, journal focus issues, author information sessions, and several other various mini-marketing campaigns. The scope of my internship changed over my six months at ECS, and those duties slowly transformed into more digital advertising and graphic design projects. I transitioned into creating digital advertisements such as banner and carousel ads for the ECS website. I also created flyers about the content in the ECS Digital Library and subscription packages. If you are a member of ECS and attended the New Orleans meeting, you may have also seen some of the larger signage I created!
One of my favorite projects at ECS was helping to redesign the ECS Transactions logo and cover. Unfortunately, I had to leave the internship before the project was carried out but I am excited to see the final product in the future. I thoroughly enjoyed working on the projects with all of the ECS staff. Everyone was friendly and always willing to help.
A lot of my work included marketing about ECS Plus, a package that offers authors from subscribing institutions the ability to publish open access using unlimited open access article credits. This subscription package was created as an interim project for the Free the Science campaign. ECS wants to provide and promote free research on electrochemical and solid state science and technology to help the world’s scientists in furthering the sustainability of the planet. The more I worked on ECS Plus projects and became familiar with Free the Science, the more I realized how important ECS’s impact on the world is. The publications department works together to publish significant work and research of scholars in highly viewed and cited ECS journals so this can be possible. I feel that I have done my best in the publications department to help ECS and its efforts towards creating a society with better access to science and progress.
