As part of my internship with the North Carolina Institute of Climate Studies (NCICS), I created a webstory about paleoclimate, the study of changes in weather patterns over periods long before consistent temperature recording began. Studying past temperatures can help policy-makers prepare for future changes. This is one of many climate topics I had to learn about for this internship and explain in common language. I also wrote accompanying social media posts which had the highest engagement of all of my NCICS content.
For another NCICS project, I created Facebook and Twitter posts advertising NOAA’s State Climate Studies, which outlined climate trends and expectations for each of the U.S. states and Puerto Rico. These posts appeared on the social media pages of NCEI, the communications arm of the federal weather organization NOAA. All the posts received high engagement, particularly on Facebook.
I mainly spent my internship with Imani Collective creating blog posts about all sorts of topics related to their holistic programs and social enterprises. The first of these blog posts, which tells the stories of an artisan named Selina Jimbi, embodies the strengths of all of these posts.
I also assisted with one of Imani Collective’s Quarterly Impact Reports, a document which explains the company’s activities in the fiscal quarter to donors, boards members, and potential funders. Internal professional writing such as this is just as important as the documents that actually reach consumers. While I did not design the document, I wrote large portions of its text.
During my Non-Western World Literature class, I learned about how Native American voices are frequently silenced by colonizers and studied my own campus searching for the voices of local Cherokee people. I realized that WCU could use more signage in the Cherokee language and wrote a report explaining how to best implement it. I later presented this paper at the SEACS 2022 conference.
While interning at Child Care Services Association in 2020, I helped create a report on their COVID Relief Fund program, which provided assistance to child care centers that were struggling due to the pandemic. In the process, I honed my professional writing skills, learned how to create informative and persuasive documents, and collected quotes to support my writing.
Stephen M. Pierce 