91´ÎÔª

FLATHEAD LAKE – It’s hard to top Grace Porges’ Montana summer internship.

A rising senior studying marketing at the 91´ÎÔª, Porges has spent her summer promoting the educational opportunities and important science conducted by UM’s .

This means long summer days living at the station on the shore of one of America’s largest, clearest and most picturesque mountain lakes, telling stories of FLBS students and researchers.

There are worse ways to earn a paycheck while building a resume.

“I feel like the luckiest gal on this lake,” said Porges, who grew up in Atlanta and fell in love with the West while visiting family in Montana. “Now I get to be out in this environment, learn about the science and really see the impact that everyone at the station has on the surrounding communities and environment. And then I get to uplift it creatively and share why it’s important – all in ways that spark my interests.”

Founded in 1899, UM’s Flathead Lake Bio Station is the second-oldest research station in the United States. Located on Yellow Bay with 60 buildings on 80 acres, the station studies Flathead Lake – the biggest, natural, freshwater lake west of the Mississippi in the contiguous U.S. – as well as surrounding natural ecosystems.

Working for this venerable institution, Porges often follows FLBS staff and students on their research adventures into the wilderness. She has collected snow algae samples in the high elevations of Glacier National Park or cruised aboard the Jessie B – the station’s 30-foot research boat. (The highly used Jessie B joined the station in 1989 and is named for Jessie Bierman, a woman who became a chief FLBS benefactor after working at the station as a student in the 1920s.)

On a recent hot July day aboard the Jesse B, Porges joined a crew collecting water samples from several sites on the southern half of Flathead Lake. Using underwater tow nets, they were part of a monitoring program working to detect the signature DNA of invasive quagga mussels. So far Flathead has avoided the scourge of the mussels, which have the ability to coat docks and lakeshores and devastate lake environments.

“We want to find any detections as early as possible,” said Phil Matson, the research lead for the monitoring program. “It’s like cancer: The sooner we find it the better.”

The crew that day consisted of Matson, research scientist Tyler Tappenbeck (who also skippered the Jessie B) and two AmeriCorps volunteers. They were an elite, early detection team working to protect one of Montana’s most revered natural places. Porges took pictures and interviewed them as they worked, and even participated in the fieldwork.

“After a day in the field,” she said, “if I filmed videos, I will edit them, write a script and do a voiceover to share online. If I’m not doing video content, then I’ll spend my days doing graphic designs and making stickers to promote the station. I also sometimes attend local events, meeting and talking with business owners and community members.

“I kind of came into this job not fully knowing what my day-to-day would look like and what to expect,” Porges said. “And I’ve discovered my bosses have been extremely receptive to my ideas and supportive of my projects. So it has been a lot more independent than I thought it would be.”

Her immediate supervisor is Ian Withrow, the station’s marketing and communication manager.

“We couldn’t be more impressed by the work Grace has done for us so far this summer,” Withrow said. “The interdisciplinary internships at FLBS are designed to provide interns with the real-world experiences and expectations that they’ll encounter when they take their careers beyond the academic environment. Grace has done an outstanding job using the tools and skills she’s been honing in the UM marketing department to make immediate impacts on the promotion of our programs and the relationships we have with our local communities.”

Withrow said they also are grateful for the philanthropic support that made Porges’ internship possible. Bob Boyce created the marketing internship in 2023 and has been a primary FLBS supporter.

“Grace has been a wonderful and creative marketing talent, with that authentic student perspective,” Withrow said.

Porges said talented UM marketing faculty members like Justin Angle and Jesse King have become important mentors to her. (It was King who pointed her toward the FLBS internship.) The University’s College of Business has exposed her to the creative joy that comes from good marketing, but it also has honed her interests about what she might dive into after graduation.

“My focus has really become sustainability in business, and I’m most interested in supply chain sustainability specifically for textiles,” she said. “I would love to get involved with an outdoor gear brand or technical gear brand. I have a real love for sustainability and the environment, which is a big reason I chose Montana for college.”

Porges said a big part of her first internship has been bonding with the melting pot of students who join FLBS and live at the bio station during the summer. She and her roommate, Meadow Gregory, a lake ecology intern from New England, have had a lot of Montana adventures together.

“It’s been so much fun,” she said. “Everyone naturally comes together to relax and enjoy each other’s company – we spend a lot of time swimming, camping, and taking trips to Bigfork for ice cream. I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of it all.”

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Contact: Dave Kuntz, UM director of strategic communications, 406-243-5659, dave.kuntz@umontana.edu; Ian Withrow, Flathead Lake Biological Station media and information coordinator, 406-243-2683, ian.withrow@umontana.edu.