Intern Betsy Popelka helps visiting school children with tunnel books at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.
Pressing the morning’s post of handmade paper made by Roosevelt High School students is all in a day’s work for intern Betsy Popelka at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.
Coffee Shop conté, 2004.
Beyond the Classroom > Internship Profile
Betsy Popelka
Major: Studio Art
Internship: Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA), Minneapolis
Betsy Popelka (’07) completed her requirements for spring semester off campus as an intern with the HECUA City Arts program. The non-profit, Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA), helps metro area colleges provide off-campus domestic and foreign study programs focused on community partnerships and social change.
Betsy spent three days a week, culminating in 200 internship hours, at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) in Minneapolis, just 20 minutes’ walk from Augsburg’s campus. MCBA offers traditional and contemporary classes and studio space for the book arts. “My official role as youth residencies intern gave me the opportunity to experience different school settings and a variety of ages, backgrounds, and abilities in the book arts.” Some school groups visit MCBA on fieldtrips, but the Youth Residencies program takes book arts into the classrooms of local schools. Betsy worked closely with the Youth Residencies Coordinator Lori Brink prepare materials for school visits, make mock-ups of books for demonstrations, and assist in teaching the curriculum.
Now she’s designing a book for classroom distribution promoting MCBA programs. And next year ? She hopes to spend spring semester studying studio art and art history in Europe.