by Delaney LePage

Major: Communication Studies
Minor: General Business
Internship: Rhode Island Sea Grant

Some of the best internships are located right here at URI. Rhode Island Sea Grant, a part of URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, supports research, outreach and education programs in Rhode Island’s coastal communities, and served as the perfect spring internship experience for Harrington School senior Ryan Davis.

At the start of his internship, Davis focused on crafting social media posts and generating analytics reports for Rhode Island Sea Grant’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages. He created a system for recording the different posts across each platform as well as drafted interpretation reports, which served as content proposals for new social media campaigns.

“This was very beneficial because it gave me an opportunity to see how important social media posts can be for an organization, as well as what it was like to be behind the scenes of [social media] accounts,” Davis said.  

In addition to working on social media, Davis gained experience in web development. One of his major projects included working on the website shoreline-ri.com, which contains over 300 public places in Rhode Island where you can participate in recreational activities from fishing to hiking. Davis visited and wrote the stories about some of these places.

The biggest assignment Davis had while working for Rhode Island Sea Grant was filming and editing a video on shellfish safety, commissioned by Rhode Island’s Department of Health.  The video discussed how Rhode Island state agencies work with the shellfish industry to ensure they are safe to eat by testing water, phytoplankton and shellfish samples for bacteria and toxins.

Upon graduation, Davis will be working for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center focusing on contract administration.