In December of 2025, Jazmen Robinson (student assistant) had the honor of interviewing Emma Heinze on their Fall 2025 internship with the Work Family Researchers Network (WFRN), advised by Dr. Stephen Sweet. Emma Heinze is a senior psychology major with minors in education and counseling.
The WFRN formed in 1997 and with more than 500 members in 2026, it is the premier 501(c)(3) nonprofit professional association for work-family scholars and leaders. Stephen Sweet, IC Professor of Sociology, serves as its Executive Officer. More information about the WFRN can be found at https://wfrn.org/.
What was your role during the internship and what were your primary responsibilities?
Steve offered me the internship for the WFRN (Work and Family Researchers Network). I had a big interest in organizational psychology and learning sciences and the intersection of work and life and psychology. I served as a student intern doing web design. My tasks were to re-design the teaching activities and syllabus pages on the WFRN website. For example, professors starting to build a Work and Life course at their university can go to that website and get free resources to help write their syllabi.
During this internship, I learned about different subject areas within Work and Life, like maternity leave, and gender and racial discrimination in the workplace. There's plenty of research on international policies and on cultural values and laws that pertain to work and family issues.
My main tasks were recruitment and emailing. Often, I sent emails to academics in bulk, but also internationally, to recruit people that haven't heard of WFRN for our research conference in June. I had to make sure those emails could be easily translated across other languages.
Did your tasks align with your academic interests or career goals?
Yes! I've been very interested in doing post-doctoral research when I graduate. I actually recently applied to a bunch of school psychology Ph.D. programs. I've always known that I want to continue academic research.
Getting to work with the WFRN let me communicate with fellow academics, build networks with them, and understand different research areas. I looked into the impact of learning disabilities, such as discrimination in the workplace and how to make the workplace more accessible to people who are neurodiverse. Also, I thought it was cool how this work relates to my education and counseling minors, and psychology major... how all these different issues systemically impact us in our lives.
Were there any challenges you faced? If so, how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenge in my experience was getting to understand how a nonprofit works and how to work with minimal resources. One of the important things I did was the role of communications, such as finding contact information for researchers and emailing them, because that's how we keep the organization going, by recruiting people.
Looking back, what was the most rewarding part of your internship?
The most rewarding part of the internship was having the opportunity to work with Steve and the WFRN, to see how the work translated into meaningful contributions in the academic community internationally, but also locally in Ithaca. I enjoyed helping put together resources to make the lives of others easier, so these these tools could be used to teach classes filled with students. Recruiting for the research conference, getting to connect people, and research can take a lot of steps and time, but getting to share it is the fun part. The whole point of it is to communicate our findings and to create better working family policies.
What advice would you give to other students considering a similar internship as yours?
Often, in classes, we tend to think that "I don't know if this professor will make time for me", or "I shouldn't bother building a rapport." I think that people should make the effort, at least at Ithaca College. The professors here really care. Teachers do know you, so just reaching out and making the effort really distinguishes you. Opportunities like this are awesome, so take them on when you get the chance.