F&M Stories

The Franklin & Marshall student experience doesn't stop when the academic year ends. From internships in Lancaster to travel around the world and research across the country, our students continue their quest for knowledge this summer.

As a rising senior majoring in public health, Colin Boyd, from Philadelphia, landed summer work as a workplace health & safety specialist intern at an Amazon warehouse in Northborough, Mass. The company reached out to him through Handshake.

As a public health major, how does your internship in workplace safety at Amazon relate to your academic studies?

Workplace and health and safety is all about improving site safety through process improvement and policy enforcement. It's about taking the global Amazon policies, and ensuring that they are being followed in the workplace, or it's successfully implementing programs that follow these policies. My F&M courses like public policy and intro to public health both touched on some of these components.

How did you learn about the internship opportunity? How did you express interest in it?

An Amazon recruiter actually messaged me via Handshake. I had a background working in warehouses, and wanted to give occupational health and safety a try, since public health is so broad.

What specifically are you doing in the internship?

I am trying to improve the job rotation procedure at my site. This so far has been about gathering injury data to support my push for a feature addition to one of the job assigning programs. I've also been performing ergonomic risk assessments to tasks workers perform through the workplace and using the hierarchy of control to find and implement safer solutions.

How did you find out about F&M? What made you apply?

My football career brought me to F&M. The academic reputation of F&M, and financial aid equivalent to other private schools, which were not as academically recognized, made me apply.