Museum Intern and Fellows Program Manager, Smithsonian

>> My name is Omar Eaton-Martinez and I work as the Inter and Fellows Program Manager at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The museum has been around since 1964. It actually existed as a national museum of the history of science and technology. Then 1980, we had a visionary director by the name of Roger Kennedy who transformed it to the National Museum of America History. What I do essentially is I recruit students for internships in our spring, summer, and fall session which is essentially takes us our whole year. I also help place them once they apply with our staff based on the needs of the staff, based on the learning objectives of the students that apply. I also manage the fellows program, which actually comes to our center office and then once they apply and they get placed in our unit, then we take-- my office takes over the administrative duties to making sure we on board them. Making sure they have a connection with their advisor and access to the collection they'll be research. I'm an email-aholic so I have to check my email and make sure that everybody's questions are answered. I get questions from staff about internship project and intern-- getting interns to the point they're working their projects. I get questions from prospective students who want to come in and-- and be interns with the Smithsonian. And also we reach out a lot to partnering with schools like University of Maryland, College Park and others to create sustainable relationships between our two institutions.