Local Impact Community-Based Learning interns leave their mark on Rockbridge County.

By Kelsey Goodwin
September 9, 2026

“Not only have we interacted with the community in a new way, but we have also created a community amongst ourselves.”

~ Molly Coman ’27

Washington and Lee University’s Community-Based Learning (CBL) program placed a new student cohort with local nonprofits and businesses in Rockbridge County this summer, continuing a program built on mutual benefit. Local organizations gain motivated, skilled support on projects that might otherwise sit on the back burner while students gain hands-on experience and a deeper connection to the community surrounding W&L’s campus. This summer, students interned with Main Street Lexington, Rockbridge Conservation, Rockbridge Rock Steady Boxing and the Lexington-Rockbridge Chamber of Commerce on projects designed to expand their capacity and impact. Sascha Goluboff, director of Community-Based Learning and professor of cultural anthropology, and Alessandra Del Conte Dickovick, associate director of Community-Based Learning, worked closely with the interns to help them develop professional skills and effective workplace communication, as well as to reflect on the importance of community building.

“The Office of Community-Based Learning is proud to continue to nurture and grow collaborative relations between the university and the community,” Goluboff says,“and it looks forward to offering another set of impactful internships next summer.”

Main Street Lexington

Main Street Lexington is a nonprofit organization dedicated to keeping downtown Lexington, Virginia, vibrant through improvement projects, supporting local businesses and organizing community events. For her CBL internship, Simmons Lee ’27, a cognitive and behavioral science major with a creative writing minor from Charlotte, North Carolina, spent seven weeks immersed in almost every aspect of the small nonprofit’s operation.

“I was super excited for the opportunity to contribute to the downtown that drew me to W&L in the first place,” Lee says. “Lexington is such a vibrant place with so much history, and Main Street’s mission to preserve that character and continue with beautification of the city is something that really stood out to me.”

Lee’s day-to-day work touched nearly every part of the organization. She created social media content, managed MSL’s downtown business gift certificate program, dug into grant research and assisted with the Freedom Food Festival and Children’s Bike Parade. This summer, she also worked on fundraising and donor management and MSL’s upcoming website migration.

“Something I really enjoyed about working for Main Street is that my tasks and assignments varied week to week, because working for a nonprofit requires skills in many diverse domains,” Lee says. “Having competencies in so many provinces is something that I think will continue to help me grow my career in the future.”

Executive Director Jeremy Franklin ’04 says the organization has come to depend on its CBL interns.

“Having W&L interns has been extremely beneficial to Main Street Lexington,” Franklin says. “The intensive seven-week CBL internship has allowed us to tackle several projects that otherwise would be beyond the scope and bandwidth of our small professional staff.”

For Franklin, who has called Lexington home since he graduated from W&L in 2004, mentoring current students carries personal significance.

“I’m very grateful for the CBL office’s work in helping integrate the university into our local community,” he says, noting that MSL has also benefited from the university’s work-study program and W&L Student Consulting projects. “On a personal level, it’s been rewarding to work with current W&L students and to see how much they’ve enjoyed getting to be a part of a community organization during their time on campus.”

Lee says the best part of her summer has been the people.

“I’ve gotten opportunities to make social media content, which has allowed me to communicate with business owners or vendors at the farmers market,” she says. “I’ve also had the opportunity to meet many important figures who make Lexington so special, such as board and committee members, chamber members, the mayor of Lexington, the city manager and more people who have helped me feel like I am immersing myself in the town.”

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Rockbridge Conservation

Rockbridge Conservation is a volunteer-driven nonprofit founded in 1976 to protect the natural and cultural resources of Rockbridge County, Virginia, with committees dedicated to watershed protection, land use, energy and climate, waste reduction and trail stewardship. This summer, the organization hosted its first-ever CBL summer intern, Mary Catherine Colo ’27, a double major in politics and history from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

“Rockbridge Conservation is really grateful for the CBL program at W&L,” says Jamie Goodin ’10, the organization’s executive director. “It’s been really fun to be on the nonprofit side of the CBL experience. Mary Catherine did an amazing job. She was incredibly responsive, thoughtful and proactive.”

Colo split her summer between two major projects: overhauling documentation for Rockbridge Conservation’s trail management system for the Uncas Trail and Sunnyside Preserve and mapping out the county’s water monitoring program.

“She worked on two important projects for us,” Goodin says. “One is really documenting our trail management system — where the trails are, what maintenance needs to be done, how often and what expertise is required — so we can better recruit new people to help maintain them.”

The second project applied a similar approach to the organization’s water monitoring programs across the county, cataloging when and what volunteers are monitoring so the group can identify gaps and better direct training and equipment.

Colo says she was drawn to the internship by her love of the outdoors.

“As a W&L student, I have been given incredible opportunities to engage with the natural resources surrounding Lexington across Rockbridge County,” she says. “I live to hike, run, swim, bike and just be outside in general. My internship with Rockbridge Conservation was an opportunity to do my part and participate in the active conservation efforts fronted by members of the community.” Colo has also used the summer to study for the LSAT and research her honors thesis. Her days combined research with time in the field.

“Some days I had hands-on work, like clearing a trail or taking a long hike to core old-growth trees,” Colo says. “This combination of research and practical experience is a diverse workload that keeps things interesting.” In one memorable outing, Colo joined an eight-hour excursion between Buena Vista and Glasgow to help map 150-year-old trees for the Virginia Department of Forestry, work Goodin says she tackled with a consistently upbeat attitude.

Though a politics and history major might seem an unlikely fit for a conservation nonprofit, Colo says the overlap has been significant.

“I spent much of my time researching for both of my projects,” she says. “I also have experienced firsthand how legislation changes are affecting the environment on a local level. This job has challenged my thinking and allowed me to consider the type of community member I wish to be, in the present and in the future.”

Goodin says that is exactly the point of a CBL placement of this length.

“These summer experiences are ultimately pretty short,” Goodin says, “so, for us, it’s less about what we can achieve with the student in terms of deliverables and more about what we can demonstrate to the students in terms of how to be a good citizen wherever they decide to be.” That lesson, Goodin says, is one every W&L student can carry with them.

For Colo, the internship reshaped how she thinks about nonprofit work.

“The passion and engagement RC volunteers show is truly inspiring,” she says. “I am so thankful for their willingness to share their vast knowledge and for their perspective as Rockbridge residents. I have seen firsthand the impact people can make when they come together to work toward a common goal, and it has compelled me to think more about the community I want to join when I leave Lexington next May.”

Rockbridge Rock Steady Boxing

Rockbridge Rock Steady Boxing offers a non-contact, boxing-inspired fitness program designed for people living with Parkinson’s disease, using footwork, punching combinations, balance drills and strength conditioning to help participants build agility, coordination and quality of life. For Courtney Schmidt ’28, a cognitive and behavioral science major with a minor in poverty and human capability studies from Pittsburgh, this summer’s CBL internship was a chance to deepen a relationship with the organization that began years earlier.

“I wanted to stay in Lexington this summer because Rock Steady Boxing has become a really meaningful part of my college experience,” Schmidt says. “I’ve volunteered with the program since my first year, and I wanted the opportunity to become even more involved.”

Schmidt, who is on the pre-med track and hopes to pursue a career in neurology or psychiatry, says the internship let her explore grant writing, funding research, class and exercise planning and independent research into Parkinson’s disease. She is completing the internship jointly with the Shepherd Program as part of her Bonner Scholar service requirement.

“My days were a mix of coaching in the classes, helping with progress assessments and some behind-the-scenes work like class planning, exercise setup and research,” Schmidt says. She also researched grants to help fund new safety equipment, including a wheelchair ramp and gait belts.

“Ultimately, my primary focus was continuing to build my relationships with the fighters [the participants diagnosed with Parkinson’s] to address their individual needs and ensure they are having fun and working hard in a safe environment,” she says.

Elizabeth Apperson, who serves as Rock Steady’s head coach, says that Schmidt has been instrumental this summer.

“She has grown so much in her confidence with the program and interaction with our fighters,” Apperson says.

Schmidt says the experience has given her skills no classroom could teach.

“It’s hands-on, it’s challenging at times, it’s rewarding, and it’s so much fun,” she says. “RSB has taken me outside of my W&L bubble and into a community with the most amazing and strong people I have ever met. This internship has taught me how to communicate clearly, adapt to individual needs and think critically.”

Above all, Schmidt says, the internship reinforced why she keeps coming back.

“The Rock Steady Boxing community really is a family, and this internship has helped me realize how lucky I am to be part of it,” she says. “I honestly love telling people about Rock Steady Boxing because I want more people to know how much it impacts individuals with Parkinson’s disease — not just physically, but emotionally and socially as well.”

Lexington-Rockbridge Chamber of Commerce

The Lexington-Rockbridge Chamber of Commerce champions economic and social progress across the greater Rockbridge community, supporting local businesses through advocacy, networking and civic initiatives. This summer, Molly Coman ’27, a business administration major with a French minor from New Orleans joined the chamber’s small staff for a CBL internship that spanned everything from event planning to long-range strategy. Tracy Lyons, executive director of the chamber, says Coman helped with nearly everything the organization does.

“We kind of just had her jump right in and help with everything a little bit, but she had some specific projects on the side,” Lyons says. Coman attended every chamber event and ribbon-cutting over the summer, sat in on one-on-one meetings with chamber members and served on the chamber’s Economic Development Committee, including a strategic-planning workshop focused on the region’s needs and priorities. Coman’s primary project was a countywide resource guide.

“She put together what we’re calling a resource guide for right now, but it’s really a quality-of-life resource guide that employers can use, and our economic development offices can use, when big employers come in and are looking to connect their employees to our community,” Lyons says.

The guide covers education, healthcare, wellness, sports and recreation, childcare and transportation, and will anchor the chamber’s website relaunch in January, with a printable version also in the works.

“It’s a beautiful document,” Lyons says, “something she could put on a resume that she contributed to, which was fun.”

Coman also researched transportation ideas and initiatives to help boost tourism and the local economy, work that grew directly out of priorities identified during the summer’s economic development workshop. She says that the internship helped her see her own career interests more clearly.

“This experience is supportive of my professional goals because it has allowed me to better navigate what I want to do in the future,” she says. “I have realized that I have interests in community engagement and creating online and printable media.” Lyons even arranged for Coman to sit down one-on-one with a chamber member for an informal mentoring conversation.

For Coman, the best part of the summer was the people who run the chamber.

“The best part about this internship has been meeting and working for the incredible women who lead the chamber of commerce,” she says. “Tracy, Erin and Alicia have been nothing but kind and welcoming this summer. Not only have they shown me the importance of having women in leadership positions, but they have also allowed me to truly grow by connecting my professional interests with the interests of the chamber.”

She also noted that the summer created new bonds for her within the campus community, noting that she especially appreciated coming together with other CBL interns in weekly meetings to reflect on their experiences at their respective internships and learn from one another.

“Not only have we interacted with the community in a new way, but we have also created a community amongst ourselves,” she says.