Like many college students, Sarah Wilson is back at home, making money working through her summer vacation.

However, Wilson, 21, is also gaining experience toward her career goals thanks to the Joseph J. Edlin Endowment Summer Journalism Internship Fund.

Wilson, entering her senior year at Mizzou as a magazine journalism major, was awarded the annual Joseph J. Edlin summer internship at the St Louis Jewish Light. This is the second year of the paid internship, which was founded in memory of the attorney and real estate developer Joseph J. Edlin, by his widow, Mimi Edlin.

Miriam “Mimi” Edlin, during a telephone interview from her current home in Sarasota, Fla., said she started the memorial fund in 1990, after her husband passed away.

“My daughters and I wanted to do something in his memory and I thought it would be very nice to have a journalism internship,” she said.

Joseph Edlin, a native St Louisan served as board president of the Jewish Light, and was an avid writer, Edlin said, getting book reviews published in the Jewish Light, the St Louis Globe-Democrat, St Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York Times.

For about ten years, the endowment set up in his memory was used for the Joseph J. Edlin Memorial Lectureship, although in 2006, the fund was used to create a summer internship position at the Jewish Light.

“We really wanted to set up the memorial fund and this internship with an appreciation for the art of communication, both in the spoken and the written word,” Edlin said. A similar internship has been set up with the Sarasota-Manatee Jewish News.

Wilson, one of over a dozen applicants for the internship position at the Jewish Light, had previously worked for one semester at the Missourian, the daily newspaper in Columbia, Mo., published by the University of Missouri.

Wilson said her interest in journalism stems from the variety of experiences it offers. “It’s not sitting at a desk from 9 to 5,” she said. “I get to go out and meet new people and learn things that I would have never known about.”

Wilson is a member of Traditional Congregation and a graduate of Parkway North High School.