Internship Spotlight: Sophia Fallon ’17

Sophia Fallon '17 at her internship this summer.
Sophia Fallon ’17 at her internship this summer at Harvard University.

Sophia Fallon ’17 from Auburn, New York, is a familiar name and face to all. As a Head Resident Assistant, the senior Committee Chair of the Board of Programmers, an Admissions Ambassador exec member, and much, much more, Sophia has made the most of her time at Providence College. She represents what every Friar strives to be: well rounded, versatile, and successful. A chemistry and secondary education major, she shows us that with the education we receive here at PC, we can do anything.

This summer, she was an intern for the Association of College and University Housing Offices International. Through this program, she was placed in three two-week programs that let high school students live and study at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With her new Harvard student ID in hand and her experience in our very own Residence Life program, she was ready to take on this exciting opportunity. Since all of the students were in high school, she was able to apply the skills and information she learned through the Admissions Ambassador program to advise her students on how to create a comfortable living situation.

Her experience with planning events on the Board of Programmers came in handy during her summer at Harvard. From Red Sox games to college visits, she had to plan and execute all of these events for the students. She states, “I also had to plan a lot of programming that would expose the students to new ways of thinking and diverse perspectives since a lot of them came from very different backgrounds. Sometimes we had to have some pretty difficult discussions. This was all so valuable because it really exposed me to a different environment than what I’ve experienced at PC and it helped me really think about what I want to do after school.”

Through this program and her training from our Residence Life program, she ultimately realized that working with student affairs is her true calling. Her passion for working with students is evident in her statement, “It taught me a lot about creating community amongst a very heterogeneous group of students in a short amount of time. It also taught me a lot about the role of a mentor and why mentorship is so important in cultivating and promoting the growth of other students which is something I’ve really been trying to think a lot about coming into my senior year with some of my positions on my different clubs.”

Working with 27 other staff members opened her eyes to how other schools and institutions approach things such as planning events and creating a community. Her students were in high school, a critical time of change for most, and Sophia learned new things not only about mentoring a new age group but about herself as well.