Internships

Sarah Brown ’22

Major

Geosciences

Project Title

Cities: Happiness Factors Across Varying Scales and Provisional Changes in Response to COVID-19

Certificate(s): Cognitive Science, Environmental Studies

I worked on two projects related to creating more sustainable and resilient urban systems. The first focused on the factors that influence perceptions of well-being so that city planners can better identify their priorities. For my second project, I documented, analyzed and shared municipal responses to COVID-19 in order to help improve resiliency to future shocks. In this internship, I listened to and transcribed interviews with government officials, helped edit and test-run the subjective well-being survey, identified possible patterns in interview data, and analyzed data from the previous well-being survey. I learned how to design a survey using Qualtrics software, basic use of the Strata statistical software, and how to clean and manage data. Beyond these concrete skills, I greatly expanded my knowledge of city governance in reaction to shocks and of the complex and emerging study of subjective well-being. This work felt tangible, pressing and important. In a summer where COVID-19 disrupted most students’ plans, I was able to engage with and learn from challenges being experienced globally.