Students get hands-on career exposure during international summer internships
September 17, 2026 — As a physics major with interests in engineering and sustainability, Kaan Mac Donald ’28 savored his summer internship in France, gaining experience in both computer and hands-on work.
The third-year physics major interned at Shifted lab in Grenoble, France. The start-up company is developing a more efficient long-term compressed air energy storage system (CAES). Mac Donald disassembled and reassembled the system as the company changed labs and wrote code for sensors to record sampling data at superfast speeds.
Kaan Mac Donald ’28 is pictured at the Shifted office in Grenoble, France, where he undertook a summer internship.
“Since Shifted is a start-up, the internship was unpaid, and I had to pay for plane tickets, rent, and food,” Mac Donald said. “College is a really important time to see the world, and France opened my eyes to how people work differently. It would not have been possible without help from the Cadmus internship fund.”
Mac Donald and Sofia Gomez Trujillo ’28 received financial assistance from the Robert Cadmus Jr. International Endowed Internship Fund to make their summer internships possible.
Trujillo interned at the Maria Paula Jimenez/Compassion Corps in Medellin, Colombia. The psychology major developed online courses for corporate wellness clients, co-developed a presentation on trauma and self-compassion for an international audience, and ran an independent meta-analysis of self-compassion interventions for anxiety.
These kinds of career-driven opportunities are exactly what Will Schnabel ’89 and his wife, Kim Berg, intended when they established the endowed internship fund in 2019. The fund has been awarded to 10 students over the last several years.
Schnabel wasn’t able to study abroad during his own Grinnell experience but has since lived and worked all over the world as a software technology executive. From Tokyo to Singapore to Tel Aviv to London, immersive global experiences exposed him to different cultural, business, and political ideas.
In 2018 and 2019, Schnabel reconnected with Grinnell through the Donald and Winifred Wilson Center for Innovation and Leadership. He returned to campus again in 2025 through Wilson Center programing to share with students his insights as an entrepreneur and executive.
Will Schnabel ’89 and Kim Berg started the Robert Cadmus Jr. International Endowed Internship Fund in 2019 to give students international career-driven opportunities.
During his student days, Schnabel first met Robert Cadmus Jr., emeritus professor of physics, during his First-Year Tutorial about Astronomy. It was Cadmus who encouraged Schnabel to pursue the 3-2 engineering program with the University of Minnesota and suggested him for a research internship within the R&D group at 3M Company. To honor Cadmus, Schnabel named the fund after him.
“A lot of what came later in my career traces back to that one introduction Professor Cadmus made for me,” Schnabel says. “Naming the fund after him felt like the right way to recognize that.”
Interning as an experimental and thermomechanical engineering at Shifted fit perfectly into Mac Donald’s interests. Taking the CAES apart and putting it back together gave him a deeper understanding of its complexities. When working on an assigned coding project, his mentor would check in and ask questions every couple of hours.
“It’s uncommon as an intern to get that much personal attention,” he said. “I liked how they worked with me, and I found the system to be very promising.”
Robert Cadmus Jr.
At Grinnell, Mac Donald practices hands-on physics and competes on the men’s tennis team. He also serves on the Physics Student Educational Policy Advisory, giving input on departmental concerns and organizing social events. This wasn’t his first educational trip overseas; last summer he interned at another, larger company in London.
In France, Mac Donald incorporated lessons he learned at Grinnell into his work. He would look back on projects from his classes as a reference, even cutting and pasting coding because it was so related. The Modern Physics 3 course in thermodynamics he took at Grinnell was particularly applicable. Even in learning new material, like the coding language Arduino, he felt he learned how to tackle the challenge at Grinnell.
Building a broader network is one of the advantages of an international program, and Mac Donald says many of the most valuable conversations he had were around the lunch table. His experienced coworkers shared a depth of industry knowledge that helped him define his future, including the possibility of founding his own company someday.
Beyond work connections, Mac Donald made friends from around the world living in a low-cost student residence in Grenoble. He also made an unexpected friend from Grinnell. Basil Dracobly ’29 lived just two minutes from Mac Donald during his month-long French language program. They visited back and forth and, in a real mix of cultures, watched World Cup games in the nearby Irish pub.
Reflecting back on his own time spent in other countries, Schnabel hopes Mac Donald, Trujillo, and other student recipients come out more worldly in several respects.
“Leadership skills and networks are useful, but what I hope for the most is a quieter shift – a bit more empathy, a bit more comfort with being the newcomer in the room,” he says. “That's what stayed with me the longest.”
—by Kim Kobersmith