While at Washington, Peyton Baldwin ’26 has built a strong and varied resume that will let her pursue any of several different career paths upon graduation. She accomplished this by combining classes from different fields, taking advantage of opportunities through the Washington College Center for Career Development, and pursuing her own interests to gain workplace skills and experience.

Since she loves to write, Baldwin chose to major in communication and media studies. She was particularly drawn to the program’s broad scope, which covered everything from podcasting to video production. She added a business management major (and marketing minor) after thinking through the behind-the-scenes work required for career paths in TV.

“It was really fun to be very creative with that process. I have this opportunity to do a lot,” Baldwin said. “I can then use these majors and these minors in a lot of different types of work. And that’s what interested me the most. I was trying to set myself up to always have different options in the future.”

With so many options, Baldwin turned to the Center for Career Development to help her narrow her focus. Through a one-day externship (or job shadow) at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michael’s, Baldwin saw how communications are an integral part of their mission and work, which includes environmental education. 

The next year, when the communication and media studies department shared summer internship opportunities with its majors, one caught Baldwin’s eye: a position to revamp the branding and outreach efforts of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Observer Program (NOP). The program tracks fish populations, collecting data for multiple purposes from biological research to setting regulations. The career center helped Baldwin prepare her resume and cover letter, and Baldwin applied.

“I grew up near the Chesapeake Bay,” said Baldwin, whose family lives in Annapolis, “so when I saw this opportunity, I thought that seems really interesting because it’s still media and communications-based and marketing-based, but it brings in some of the science aspect that I was potentially interested in.”

Baldwin spent the summer working at NOAA’s James J. Howard Marine Sciences Lab in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and was able to live nearby thanks to funding from the College’s Hodson Trust Internship Fund, administered through the career center and the Office of Student Achievement and Success.

During the internship, Baldwin created the framework for a rebrand of NOP, detailing its benefits, providing possible new names for the agency, and explaining various approaches it could take to a new emblem. Her project is the first stage in helping NOP address a need to improve recruitment and retention of employees and to better represent advances in fisheries research.

One of the things Baldwin learned was the unique nature of working for the federal government, including the long timelines and approval processes that meant her suggestions wouldn’t be in place quickly. But she found the work interesting and felt good about making her own (eventual) contribution to their continued success.

“One of the most gratifying aspects has to be that I’ve been able to lead the project, not on my own because obviously there’s a lot of support that comes with this internship, but I’ve been given the freedom to come up with my own ideas,” Baldwin said. “I’m setting up a framework that I think would be the best way to go about the project that they’re going to be able to take to then implement the rebrand.”

Baldwin is not sure if she’ll stay in science communication, look for work in the entertainment industry (her planned topic for her senior capstone project), or end up in a completely different career. But the things she has studied, the skills she has developed, and the opportunities she has had to explore while at Washington mean Baldwin will be ready for a wide variety of possible futures. 

—Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven