Naomi, second from left, poses with other interns working with USF’s Center for Brownfields Research and Redevelopment to research challenges for communities built on land exposed to environmental contamination — aka brownfields.
ExCel with Experience - Naomi Burton
Excel with Experience | Erica Chong | Naomi Burton | Lillianna Cwynar
Naomi Burton, senior, majoring in environmental engineering
By Dave Scheiber
o say Naomi has made the most of her undergraduate hands-on learning and research experience would be a vast understatement.
She has served as a CASH (Cognition, Aging, Sleep and Health) Lab research assistant; a resident assistant for USF’s Department of Housing; a Brownfields intern in the Department of Anthropology; an engineering intern in the City of Temple Terrace’s Department of Public Works; and a water/wastewater intern for the ChastainSkillman company.
Naomi grew up in West Palm Beach and Jacksonville, Florida, and was attracted to USF by the research opportunities and offers of financial aid.
“My mom is from Jamaica and put her blood, sweat and tears into her single-mother household, so I wanted to do anything I could so she wouldn’t have to pay for me to go to college,” Naomi says. “But I genuinely loved it here. I don’t think anywhere else would have been as good a fit for me.”
She wasted no time taking advantage of the opportunities USF provided.
“There aren’t barriers to do research or get volunteer hours, or to become involved with the community,” she says. “USF is very open to you trying new things. They’re OK with you going into a lab and seeing how you feel there, and they encourage you to experiment.”
Naomi, whose mom is a nurse practitioner, gravitated to engineering, following in the footsteps of her late father. Initially, mechanical engineering interested her. Then she turned to biomedical engineering, thinking she might pursue a dual MD/PhD degree.
But a 2024 anthropology internship sparked an interest in community issues. She has helped with designing and constructing sidewalks and geographic information system (GIS) software to code and organize city maps that help people locate resources and buildings.
She’s now considering environmental engineering and a job with Temple Terrace Public Works.
“I didn’t realize how much I loved GIS and wanted to make it part of my career,” she says. “And the internship also introduced me to the workplace atmosphere, which was a big plus.”
Naomi learned about the ChastainSkillman internship at a USF career fair. While she is still pondering her ultimate focus, she remains particularly grateful for the research experience she has had along the way. It started with the Undergraduate Research Society, for which she was a project lead on a research poster — helping her better analyze literature.
Naomi Burton
“This also allowed me to present at the OneUSF Undergraduate Research Conference, which gave me a better idea of how conferences work and what a research poster is supposed to look like,” she says. “And now I’m working within the society on the research innovation committee.”
She credits the CASH Lab with teaching her discipline and working effectively as a team.
“I really did enjoy many different aspects of each of my internships,” she says. “I don’t know if I’ll stay in environmental engineering or if I want to go into material science and a private sector job, because I like developing products. I may pursue a master’s degree in that. But I feel like no matter where I end up, I’m going to be OK.”
