That opportunity has grown significantly in recent years. Once primarily serving students from local colleges and universities, the Center’s internship program has grown to now offer stipends for part-time and full-time internships year-round, attracting students from colleges and universities across the country. Our 2026 summer intern class is represented by currently enrolled or recent graduates from the following academic institutions:

Clemson University;

• Clemson University
• Oregon State University;
• Colorado State University;
• University of California, Davis;
• Virginia Tech.

“The Center’s Internship Program is an invaluable part of our Clinic, bringing passionate, hardworking, and talented individuals from across the country to gain hands-on experience in wildlife rehabilitation and avian medicine,” said Clinic Manager Katie Helland. “Each intern contributes fresh perspectives, enthusiasm, and a genuine commitment to our mission, while providing meaningful support to our clinical team during our busiest seasons.”

The growth of the internship program is due in large part to the passion and generosity of Sherry Cornell, whose connection to the Center began long before she became a volunteer. Not long after Sherry retired and returned to her beloved state of South Carolina in 2018, she began volunteering in the Avian Medical Clinic at the Center for Birds of Prey. In many ways, however, her connection to the organization began decades earlier.

In the 1990s, Sherry’s father attended a Georgetown Rotary Club meeting where Center founder Jim Elliott spoke about raptor conservation and the medical care being provided at what was then the Charleston Raptor Center. Inspired by Jim’s work, Sherry’s father, a pharmacist, arranged for much-needed medical supplies to be donated to the growing organization by reaching out to Sherry’s brother, a physician running a medical clinic in East Texas. Years later, Sherry would come to see that family connection as an early chapter in the story that eventually brought her to the Center herself.

As a volunteer, Sherry quickly found meaningful ways to contribute to the Avian Medical Clinic, earning Volunteer of the Year honors in 2020. Inspired by the Center’s impact and a desire to do more, she began speaking with her financial advisor and Center leadership about creating a lasting philanthropic legacy. Reflecting on her own career, her childhood admiration for conservation figures like Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall, and her passion for wildlife, Sherry chose to support one of the Center’s most important long-term investments: its internship program.

To Sherry, the internship program represents far more than workforce development. It is an opportunity to encourage young professionals to build careers around the passions that first inspired them and to remind them that meaningful work is possible. As interns carry the knowledge, skills, and values they gain at the Center into future careers in veterinary medicine, rehabilitation, conservation, and environmental education, they extend the Center’s influence well beyond its campus. Reflecting on the program, Sherry elaborates further in saying, “establishing a fund which can provide a stipend to each of the Center’s dedicated interns allows me to be a small part of their ultimate journey forward.”

That ripple effect is the greatest measure of success. By investing in young people today, Sherry is helping ensure that the knowledge, values, and commitment to excellence that define the Center will continue to benefit birds — and the people dedicated to protecting them — for years to come.