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Hart Career Center

Hannah Horn Internship with the Bloomington Farmers' Market

Hannah poses downtown with the lincoln statue
Hannah Horn '20 poses with the Lincoln statue in Downtown Bloomington while sporting some Bloomington Farmers' Market merchandise. 

Name: Hannah Horn

Class: 2020

Major: Environmental Studies Policy  

Hometown: Coal City, Illinois 

Interning with: Downtown Bloomington Association/Bloomington Farmers’ Market 

Location: Bloomington, Illinois  

Position: Assistant Market Manager  

 

  1. What are your everyday responsibilities as an intern?

My day to day responsibilities focus around making sure our social media accounts for the market are up to date, professional looking, and helping to attract more patrons. Additionally, I work with my supervisor to answer vendor related questions and handle the accounting from the market.

 

  1. How did you land this internship?

I had this position suggested to me by both Dr.Brown in the Environmental Studies department and Brian Richardson in the career center who both thought that I would be successful in working with my supervisor. I went in for an interview and immediately hit it off with my supervisor who hired me on the spot.

 

  1. What drew you to this internship?

The opportunity to learn more about a local sustainable food system and some of the challenges and successes associated with the market. 

 

  1. How did IWU prepare you for succeeding as an intern?

My opportunity to serve on the Campus Activities Executive Board helped prepare me for large scale event planning, understand successful ways to market events, and improved my communication skills and ability to successfully navigate problems that arise. Additionally, working for the Argus helped to prepare me for news briefs that we send out and our weekly newsletter.

 

  1. What do you hope to gain from this internship experience as you look forward to being a student/professional?

As a student, I hope to continue to gain a healthy work ethic and to do my best to positively impact as many people as possible. As a professional, I think it is always important to remember your roots and where you come from, as someone who grew up in a farming community I understand the struggles of my neighbors to keep their farms afloat and how severely that can be impacted by a number of factors. For me as a professional, it reassures me that I need to make sure to advocate for those people who will be most detrimentally affected by climate change and other harmful environmental factors.

 

  1. What's been a particularly rewarding experience as an intern?

Helping farmers and other vendors who don't always understand how to use social media increase their following and their sales by featuring the important work that they do to reach their end result of some amazing products.

 

  1. In your opinion, why is it important for students to experience internships?

I've always been a person who learns best by application and an internship does exactly that, it takes the education that you've received and allows you to put it into action. It allows you to make those connections that you can't always get in the classrooms and to discover new ways of applying a class that you might never think you would've used.