Separated by a Generation, United by a Common Passion

When Constance Foster '00 came back from summer break for junior year, she found she had a new knack for annoying her friends.

"I wouldn't shut up about this awesome summer job I had," explained Foster, who had spent 10 weeks interning at the nonprofit Quebec Labrador Foundation, based in Ipswich, Mass. Compared with her job from the previous summer — preparing hoagies at a Subway restaurant in her Connecticut hometown — the internship was something to brag about.

Impressively, she had managed to work and lunch with the organization's president often. In addition, she occasionally ate dinner with his family at his home 20 miles north of Boston on a 300-year-old farm, complete with two cattle named Thelma and Louise.

"How many people work for an organization and get to have dinner with the president?" Foster beamed.

Perhaps only people like Foster, who secured the summer job through an alumni connection. QLF's president and CEO, Larry Morris '69, is one of a number of alumni who reserve summer internships for Princeton students. According to Morris, QLF hires at least a couple of Princeton students each year through the Class of '69 Community Service Fund.

QLF — which advocates economic growth accompanied by environmental conservation in eastern Canada and New England — depends on energetic interns to reach out to many of the region's disadvantaged communities, Morris said.

"These communities have had a difficult time adjusting to changes in the 19th and 20th centuries," he explained. "We bring people in like Princeton students to help them."

As a program associate, Foster worked with QLF's The Sounds Conservancy grants program, which gives small grants to individuals and organizations conducting research up and down the six main sounds in New England. She also prepared material for a book — which she finished the following summer — summarizing the results of the grant recipients' work, and organized a reunion for grant recipients.

While alumni-student connections are often beneficial to alumni, for students, they provide opportunities that can be life-changing.

"It was working at QLF that really affirmed my career path," said Foster, a Wilson School major whose thesis investigates New Zealand's conservation policies and protection of the yellow-eyed penguin. "I thought I wanted to do work at a nonprofit environmental organization before, but I was not sure what it would be like. After QLF, I thought, 'Absolutely, this is really what I want to do.' "

Coordinating The Sounds Conservancy program and gathering summaries of the recipients' work deeply engaged Foster. "I just became really interested, going out to the field to meet grant recipients just because I was so fascinated with their work," she said. "I was doing so many things. Some days I would be sitting in front of the computer and other days road-tripping to see recipients. I went to the shore of Long Island, I got to go out on a boat and do water testing, I got to spend a day touring the Great Gull Island reservation."

"Sometimes I'd work weekends, not because Larry told me I had to but because I wanted to," Foster added.

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Providing internships to students planning to pursue careers in environmental research is a high priority for QLF, said Morris, who joined the organization as a summer intern in 1975 while completing a Ph.D. in natural resources at Cornell University.

"When I was looking for a job in the environmental field, I couldn't find one," he said, explaining that at the time of his graduation from Princeton the environmental movement was in its "primordial" stage, and did not gain momentum until several years later with the establishment of Earth Day in 1971. "It was difficult to find those kinds of opportunities, but thankfully many of those exist today. It is very important to provide the access."

Friendship

For students, working with an alum can jump-start more than just their careers — it can lead to life-long friendships as well. And this was the case for Foster and Morris.

"Larry is a very outgoing, very nice and funny person," Foster said, relating her first impression of Morris. "He puts you at ease."

She added, "I really didn't know what I was going into. But instead of asking what I can do for the organization, he kept on asking what I wanted to do for the organization. It was amazing. A sophomore at Princeton, and I was being asked what I wanted to do."

If she was unsure of herself at that first meeting, Foster displayed no sign of being intimidated, Morris said.

"She walked in like she owned the place," Morris recalled. "I remember having to do very little. She just picked it up, rolled up her sleeves and went to work."

"Constance came in and took over my job, that's what she did," he added jokingly.

Foster flourished under the independence her job required, Morris said. In addition to organizing the reunion for grant recipients, she also initiated a publication chronicling the program's recent grants. According to Morris, this book is one of the best pieces QLF has printed.

"She's the kind of person who excels in this situation. She was independent and didn't need huge amounts of supervision," Morris said. "We call on independence, maturity, decision-making, and that's where Constance excelled."

For her part, Foster credited Morris for placing a great deal of trust in her.

"He wasn't over my shoulder everyday," she said. "But on the other hand he wasn't absent all of the two months I was there. He allowed me to be creative . . . but be supervised as well."

As Foster and Morris' respect grew for each other, their friendship did too.

"We'd go out to lunch together. Or I'd randomly just talk with him, because his office door was always open," Foster remarked. "It was so cool working with someone who went to Princeton. We could just talk about how it was different when he was here."

Foster helped teach Morris' teenage children to drive, and would often bridge the generation gap between Morris and his children by translating his statements into teenage vernacular, he recalled.

By the end of the summer, Foster received QLF's Thomas C. Gray Award for her work as an intern. She also had a reason — "an awesome summer job" — to return to QLF the following summer. But because she was studying abroad in Australia during the spring term, she could not apply through the class of '69 fund. Instead, Foster said, "I just e-mailed Larry, and he was like, sure!"

To be sure, it was not a hard decision for Morris to rehire Foster.

"When you have someone who had done an excellent job, you'd have to have rocks in your head not to find a way to have her back," he said. "My job was easy: just to find a way to get her back. I didn't even blink."

And even if Foster does not return for a third internship at QLF this summer — though she says there is a possibility she will — Foster and Morris' paths continue to meet occasionally outside of Ipswich.

"Whenever he comes to Princeton, he'll see me," Foster said proudly. "We had ice cream at Halo Pub, we ate at Tower Club and hung out at a tailgate party. All my friends who have met him really love him."

Apparently, according to Foster, her friends now understand why she never shuts up about her summer job.