The internships, offered through a partnership with IES Abroad, are open to students in the Chapman Social Impact Cohort
Four students who sailed on Semester at Sea this academic year have been awarded Chapman Social Impact Program Internships for Summer 2026. The four students, two from our Fall 2025 Voyage and two from the current Spring 2026 Voyage, will complete the internships through IES Abroad’s summer internship program in Cape Town, South Africa.
The Fall 2025 cohort winners are Nathan Buehner, a Design, City & Regional Planning major in the College of Architecture and Engineering at California Polytechnic State University, and Sahara Smith, a Computer Science major, with minors in Mathematics, Business Administration, and Innovation & Entrepreneurship at The University of Tulsa. Danelle Hall, an Animal Behavior and Psychology major at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and University of Wisconsin-Madison student Molly Kunkle, an Environmental Studies & Psychology major, with minors in Consulting & Science Communication, are the Spring 2026 cohort awardees. Danelle and Molly will be visiting the IES Abroad offices on March 9 during the voyage’s 6-day port stay in Cape Town.
The four students were selected by the home office team at the Institute for Shipboard Education. The total award amount, provided by the Chapman Family Foundation, is around $10,000 per student and covers room and board, international health insurance, round-trip international travel to Cape Town, 3-credits tuition for IES Abroad’s Internship Seminar Course, a school of record transcript, and textbooks and course materials.
The IES internship in Cape Town allows students to develop their professional and intercultural communication skills while doing a 32-hour-per-week internship with a local business or organization. Chapman Social Impact awardees work with local businesses or organizations focusing on social impact issues.
Semester at Sea’s Chapman Social Impact Program enrolls 25 students in a cohort and class each semester that explores the positive impact of local changemakers and organizational partners in the port countries we visit. In addition to the three-credit course, the cohort visits NGOs in two of the countries we visit to gain an understanding of each organization’s local and regional work and impact. The program is supported by the Chapman Family Foundation.
