Our Class has sponsored two internship projects, one of which is Dartmouth Partners in Community Service. As part of that program, classmates serve as mentors to student interns. Jacqueline Francis recently met Serena Zhu in San Francisco. If you’re interested in being a mentor, please contact Linda Blockus.
As a Dartmouth Mentor, I met Serena M. Zhu (class of 2019), who traveled to San Francisco with Dartmouth Partners in Community Service Non-profit Learning Internship Program this summer. Serena worked at the St. Anthony Foundation (also known as St. Anthony’s), a social service agency in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.
Over the summer, Serena and I met several times over tea and coffee to talk about her responsibilities at St. Anthony’s. She assisted Tech Lab instructors to teach basic computer skills to St. Anthony’s guests and she helped to coordinate and organize an end-of-summer program that provides schoolchildren with fall clothing and school supplies.
I visited Serena at St. Anthony’s at the end of the summer. She gave me a tour of its campus and introduced me to her colleagues and some of the guests she met during the internship. All spoke highly of Serena, having come away with the same impressions that I had formed about her: she’s a smart and hard-working young woman, who distinguished herself and represented Dartmouth well during her internship.
It was also gratifying to view San Francisco through the eyes of a newcomer to the city, and to learn more about St Anthony’s. It’s a highly respected agency, and the work that they do is inspiring. Serena was deeply affected by the experience of working at St. Anthony’s, especially in the back-to-school project. (Here’s a photo of the two of us in St Anthony’s clothes sorting room in August.)I look forward to keeping in touch with Serena in the coming years. I enjoyed hearing about her Dartmouth experience and sharing some of my own with her. It was a great exchange and we both value this Dartmouth bond.
— Jacqueline Francis, ’85
Jackie is an art historian who specializes in 20th century US modernist painting. Her current position is Robert A. Corrigan Visiting Professor in Social Justice at San Francisco State University. She is also BADA’s Northern California rep.
