UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.- Penn State senior Tess Kearns doubles as a both a student-athlete and a valuable intern in the Penn State Athletics Department. She serves as an asset to her cross country team, while also being a role model and mentor to students interning in the athletic field.
In the Spring of 2018, Kearns began working in the video department for Penn State Athletics. Her skills and diligence helped her quickly become familiar with a majority of the job's equipment and tools, as her internship requires her to capture professional shots of teams and athletes during sporting events.
"I work in editing and E&G, so I go to the games and gather footage. I get stuff for highlight reels and b-roll. After the game, we package it then edit it then send it out to teams," she said.
By already being involved with cross country, Kearns knows what to expect during a Penn State athletic event. In fact, the cross country team has helped her understand the rules of different sports and allowed her to make friends with a variety of athletes on different teams. Kearns is a special member to the Penn State intern team because she is the only student-athlete currently working in her department.
"I know a lot of the people through athletics and they help me out by telling me to watch out for specific players or even plays that may happen," Kearns said.
This experience allows her to attend an abundance of sporting events where she learns and develops skills that will benefit her in the future. After college, Kearns wants to have a career focusing on editing and post-production. By interning for Penn State, she has gained advanced skills that many other students her age have not gotten the opportunity to acquire.
"When I graduate I want to get into a career of editing and post-production," she said. "Through this internship, I am gathering a lot of the footage that normally I wouldn't get to do in just an editing internship. Being able to see the creative eye that you have to have to get the best footage possible."
Kearns works closely with Kyle Rinaldi, a videographer and editor for Penn State. Luckily, he is able to teach her different techniques, show her all the "good angles," and demonstrate how to be successful in her field. Rinaldi has been a mentor to Kearns throughout her time working with Penn State.
"Helping Kyle package together some highlight reels that go out has taught me how to look at different clips. Being able to edit and get the sports look of it instead of the documentary or interview look has shown me the correct angles to shoot at," Kearns said.
Kearns is also known through the entire athletic community for her charisma and intelligence. Rinaldi speaks very highly of her and explains how great of a team player she is. She has helped fill in for missing interns and has also been a valuable mentor for the newer, younger interns.
"She just worked a football game for us last week because one of our guys called off who is normally on our Beaver Stadium extra crew, where they do in game content. We interview different people so we are able to release a package on game day so that we can enhance our fans experience when watching the game. So, she is not normally on this crew and she stepped right in and did as well if not a better job than that person would've done," Rinaldi said.
Rinaldi believes that Kearns is benefitting from this program as a whole and learning how to transform her skills and abilities. She has used her organizational skills to neatly file and label the entire department.
"One of the things she volunteered to do and in my opinion is not the most glorious job of it all was she went through all of our clips and named and labeled them. I think you learn a lot from that because you get to see people that are really good at shooting and constantly go through and see good clips so that you can learn from them," Rinaldi said.
"Tess comes early and leaves late. She is a hard-working young lady," he added. "She knows everybody whether it is administrators, coaches or athletes and everybody knows Tess."
Kearns continues to leave her mark here at Penn State whether it is behind the camera or wearing her Blue and White colors on the course and track.
