Summer in Atlanta: Emory students find purpose and peace staying local

In the summer months, Emory’s campus is characterized by a sense of quiet. The Quad, typically thronged with students in spring and fall, is lightly populated, and the sound of windblown leaves can be heard rustling in the trees. 

Summer students are making the most of this oasis of calm, contributing to groundbreaking research, gaining hands-on experience, and preparing for their future careers with internships in the Atlanta area.

Take Lauren Wald, a rising senior from Parkland, Florida. She recently completed a summer internship with the Dekalb County Public Defender’s Office, an opportunity supported by the Emory College Pathways Center, which provided free housing for Wald on Emory’s Clairmont campus. She says the experience offered the best of both worlds: the independence of working in the city and the familiarity of life at Emory.

“I’ve fallen in love with Atlanta,” says Wald, a psychology major on the pre-law track. “This was an opportunity to be somewhere new but also familiar while having a full-time job. Now I’m comfortable and ready for that reality after this year.”

Like Wald, many Emory students stayed in the Atlanta area to pursue their passions and learn lessons that will shape their futures, on campus and beyond. They also found time to rest, pick up new hobbies and explore their surroundings. 

Read more about the experiences of four Emory students who stayed in Atlanta for the summer.

Lauren Wald

For Wald, the internship with the DeKalb County Public Defender’s Office was an extension of her interest in the intersections of psychology and law. But before applying, she wasn’t sure if she could do the job. She thought most interns in the legal field came from a political science background. 

“If I hadn't taken the leap, if I had just believed that I wasn’t qualified, then I might have never done it,” she says. “I'm grateful for my supervisors’ trust, support and guidance.”

Wald adds that it’s easy for students to suffer from “perfectionism paralysis.” The internship taught her not to limit her aspirations. “My advice to other students is, when you put yourself in situations where you need to learn, you will learn,” she says.

And learn she did — about the legal system, navigating archives, using databases and more.

In the courtroom, Wald took notes on proceedings and passed out applications to potential clients. She also assisted in the discovery process by reviewing evidence, body-cam footage, statements and other documents to help her supervisors form the best cases for their clients. 

“It was definitely the most transformative experience I’ve had to date,” she says. “It brought me closer to the local community in the Atlanta area, and it helped me see Emory as part of a wider community in Georgia. I learned to approach every client with positivity, grace and empathy while still being professional.”

Wald says she’ll carry these lessons with her as she continues to explore her legal interests and prepares for law school. 

At the moment, she’s interested in neuroethics and pharmaceutical regulation. No matter what kind of law she pursues, she says she appreciates how Emory has allowed her to explore different aspects of the justice system.

“Emory is a place where I can reflect on my ideas, speak with professors and learn about policies and what they actually mean, and then have the opportunity to go out and practice those things in the community,” she says.

After a long day dealing with real-world issues, Wald says she needed time to unwind. Emory’s calm summer campus was the perfect outlet.

She developed a weekend routine: Go to Kaldi’s at the Depot, journal, walk through the Quad to the library, go far into the cavernous stacks and pick a book (most recently one on criminology) and find a place to read. 

“It’s rejuvenating,” Wald says. “It’s a really special experience to feel like you have the campus to yourself.” 

Wesley Leong

Emory rising senior Wesley Leong spends his summer days in the Atwood Chemistry Center, hidden from the beams of the burning Georgia sun. Inside, wearing a blue lab coat and gloves, he encounters a different powerful light source — spin LEDs, which he generates through a thin film of chiral crystals to test the effects of circularly polarized light.

Leong, a chemistry major, is a summer research assistant in the lab of Letian Dou, Paul & Phyllis Fireman Professor of Chemistry. Dou’s work explores, among other topics, the possible applications of spin LEDs in fields like biomedical sensing technology and 3D displays.

The lab’s processes are “complex” and thrilling, says Leong, who is from Cleveland. He adds that “summer is a great opportunity to get even more involved on campus.”

“Before this lab experience, I didn’t have a long-term goal in mind,” he explains. “But doing this has helped me understand what I want in the future: to continue conducting research in graduate school, and maybe even become a professor one day.” 

Leong’s time in Dou’s lab also helped him realize how much science is taken for granted in everyday life. 

“For example,” he says, “there’s all this technology behind a computer, but I just open it up and start typing away. I’ve started to think about how there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes, the years of development. It’s opened my eyes.”

With life moving a little slower in the summer heat, Leong has taken up additional hobbies, such as baking, crocheting and salsa dancing, the last of which will come in handy when he reunites with the Emory Ballroom Dance Club in the fall.

“It’s been great for my independence,” he says. “Every other summer I’ve gone home, and staying here I’ve learned so much about living on my own and how to navigate life, without the high energy of everyone being around in the school year. It’s helped me grow as a person, step out of my comfort zone and break that safety net I’m used to.”

Ashritha Kalakuntla

Ashritha Kalakuntla, a rising junior environmental sciences major and Woodruff Scholar, heard from friends about the Community Belonging and Social Change Fellows Program (CBSC). She knew it was for her right away.

The program starts with a fall semester course that explores the principles and theories of community building. Fellows learn about different approaches to community change and analyze real examples as case studies. In the spring and summer semesters, student teams are matched with various community projects in the Atlanta area. Together, the fellows and partner organizations craft a workplan that meets both the local context and the partners' goals, while also providing students real-world experience in community-centered work.

For her summer partnership, Kalakuntla was paired with New American Pathways, an organization based in nearby Clarkston, Georgia, that resettles and supports refugees in the Atlanta area. Kalakuntla acted as a third-party researcher, conducting surveys with refugees about how the organization’s services could be improved.

“This was a unique opportunity to really get engrained in the community,” says Kalakuntla, who is from Las Vegas. “I wanted to get outside of my Emory bubble. Atlanta is a city of such history and cultural diversity, so it was important for me to experience that.”

Kalakuntla says she most enjoyed getting to know the clients of New American Pathways. She was especially moved by the ways they supported each other. For example, one client stayed well past his appointment in the New American Pathways office to help translate for others in need.

“Throughout the summer, I got to work with people of all different backgrounds, personalities and experiences,” she says. “That’s something I’ll definitely carry with me into the future.”

Another highlight for Kalakuntla was a CBSC Fellows trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the group met with several local community leaders and observed their work firsthand, inspiring the fellows to consider how they might impact their own communities.

“My biggest takeaway from the program is how complex community building can be,” Kalakuntla says. “Being able to put what we learned in the fall into practice in the spring and summer really helped me understand the gravity and importance of the work.”

Beyond her internship, Kalakuntla’s summer was full of personal growth and small moments of joy. She walked all over the city and tried Nigerian food for the first time.

“It was a great way to understand myself and learn how to spend time with myself,” she says of her summer experience. “It showed me what life may look like for me once I graduate, and it was an amazing precursor to that.”

Walter Miley

Many Emory students with local internships know rising junior Walter Miley as a friendly face. He’s not just a classmate; he is also a student worker for Emory’s Conference Services Department, where he manages housing for interns staying on the Clairmont campus.

The position, he says, has taught him how to budget, manage billing procedures, maintain accurate financial records and conduct customer service — all relevant skills for his joint major in economics and human health.

His Emory coworkers, he says, turned an ordinary summer job into something memorable.

“I’ve really enjoyed the community building that goes on behind the scenes,” explains Miley, an Emory QuestBridge Scholar from Brooklyn. “Everybody I’ve worked with has become like family.”

His student colleagues range from nursing majors to DJs who perform around Atlanta. “We all come from different backgrounds, and we all want to help the world in different ways,” he explains. “It’s cool to just sit at my desk and hear about other people’s aspirations.”

Miley is also spending his summer days working a few hours a week as a clinical support coordinator for Mark Spencer, an assistant professor at the Emory School of Medicine, on a project helping formerly incarcerated people receive equitable healthcare access. The project was a major reason Miley decided to stay in Atlanta for the summer.

In this role, he serves as a point-of-contact for patients, scheduling appointments and helping arrange transportation. The work is especially meaningful to Miley. He has his own story involving a beloved family member who was once incarcerated.

“Now, I’m in a space where I can have conversations about what does healthcare look like in prison? What does access to healthcare look like after prison?”

Miley says he appreciates the slower speed of the summer months. “It’s allowed me to reflect and pause — and to ask myself what’s next.”

As he explores these personal questions, he likes to clear his head by getting up early, when the sun is low on the horizon, and heading to Lullwater Nature Preserve.

There, he has rediscovered a passion for running. Guided by the steady, cadenced sounds of his shoes on the trail, Miley moves beneath the trees, hoping to finish his trek before the summer sun heats up.