As students were receiving their acceptance letters and thinking about where they wanted to spend the next few years of their lives, no one knew for certain what the fall semester would look like. Many students chose to take a gap year and wait for thing to shake out and for the future to feel more certain. Chloe Martelon ’25 spent her gap year realizing how her life and upbringing could inform her academic career.
“Over my gap year, I reflected on my community,” Chloe explained. Chloe is from Telluride, Colorado, and her father worked for the local tourism board for many years. After graduating from high school at the height of the pandemic, she spent much of the 2020-2021 academic year working in the Telluride visitor center.
“Being there with my parents during the entirety of Covid and seeing how a destination like Telluride can go through another whole life cycle when something crazy happens led me to think about what I wanted to study.” She began at UVM in the fall of 2021 as an English major, but quickly began looking into other majors. “I saw Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, and I thought about how tourism is a part of my life,” Chloe said. “I made the conscious decision to continue pursuing it.”
The Parks, Recreation, and Tourism (PRT) program is, as Senior Lecturer Dave Kaufman told Chloe during her freshman year, a "discovery" major. Chloe took Dave’s Resort Management and Marketing course during her sophomore year, which has a 24-hour work experience component designed to give students an understanding of the many competing factors at play in the operation of a resort or hospitality organization.
Chloe did her one-day work experience with Hello Burlington, a division of the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce dedicated to marketing of and promotion for the city of Burlington. She made such an impression during that single day of work that Hello Burlington invited her back to complete the more extensive 135-hour internship that is a requirement for students in the PRT program. During her internship, Chloe worked for the organization as a Digital Marketing and Content Analytics intern.
“Hello Burlington really trusted me creatively,” Chloe said. “They let me pick broad topics to write blog posts and create social media content about.” Chloe was on board at Hello Burlington as they were beginning to work with a PR firm, and watching their creative production process was a valuable learning opportunity for her.
“In my head I thought I wasn’t creative enough to come up with or contribute to those ideas, but I was able to help and learn a lot.” During her five months as a Hello Burlington intern, Chloe co-managed the organization’s social media accounts with a combined reach of over 140,000, established a database of events, vendors, and locations, maintained the website and ensured it was up-to-date, and wrote several blog posts.
“These are exactly the kinds of experiences that make the PRT internship so valuable for our students,” explained PRT Professor Patricia Stokowski. “Students become immersed in the daily work of an agency, business, or organization: they’re expected to arrive on time, work under deadline, collaborate with others, solve problems, develop skills beyond what they know, take responsibility, and produce impactful results. An internship is a nonstop lesson – and in every case, as a result of their internships, our students have grown as individuals and as leaders.”
Chloe’s internship wasn’t the only way she pursued her interest in tourism and hospitality management. In the spring of 2024, she studied abroad in Florence, Italy, at the Lorenzo de’ Medici Institute. “I showed Dave the courses I could take, and he rightly pointed out that anything I took would help bolster my studies here at UVM,” Chloe said.
And she was right: Italy is the fourth most touristed country on the planet. According to UNESCO, Florence saw 15 million tourists a year before the pandemic, and is once again on the rise as international tourism growth recovers. “It was a great place to study with a focus on tourism,” Chloe said. She especially enjoyed a museum course that she took in Florence. “It was fascinating to learn about how local organizations work to keep locals engaged with and going to museums while also recognizing the impact of the tourism and what an effect it has on the economy,” Chloe said.
Her experience studying abroad was so impactful that upon her return to UVM, Chloe began working in the Office of International Education as a Study Abroad Peer Advisor to help more students have great experiences like hers. “It’s nice to help people who are in the process that I was once in,” Chloe explained. She hopes that more Rubenstein School students will study abroad. “Talk to your advisor and figure out how,” Chloe urged her fellow students. “You can go in the summer, you can go on spring break, you can go for a full semester—however you choose to do it, it’s so worth it.”
Chloe’s work as a study abroad peer advisor has had an impact on her career aspirations and post-grad plans. “I’d love to work for a study abroad provider, or do marketing for a larger resort or travel company,” Chloe explained. Many Rubenstein School students like Chloe use internship and academic opportunities to hone their career interests. Thanks to the PRT program’s internship requirement and the robust study abroad offerings at UVM, Chloe was able to gain hands-on work experience in the field she wants to enter after graduating.
Chloe had a few words of wisdom to share with younger students who are trying to discern their passions and navigate making the most of their college experience. “I remember freshman year, I felt a lot of pressure to ‘stand out.’ But what I really needed to do was look inward,” Chloe recollects.
“I thought about how to contribute well in classes. I realized that you don’t always have to be the one raising your hand, but it always helps to go make connections with your professors after class. Talking with my professors about my interests and their expertise was really helpful. It made me realize that if I can tailor my experience to my strengths and interests, that will help me make the most of my time here.”
Chloe also recollected an invaluable piece of advice from her older brother. “He told me, ‘College is going to go by so fast,’” Chloe said. “So he told me to ‘say yes to things, take chances, because you’ll look back and be glad you did.’” With just a few days left until graduation, Rubenstein School students like Chloe can certainly say that they made the most of their short and precious time here.
All images courtesy of Chloe Martelon
