Steph's on a university-administered internship from today until the end of August, when school kicks back in.

When I was in college, one of the best opportunities I was ever given was a summer internship with the "San Diego Union-Tribune," the big metro paper in San Diego. Here I was, a college kid, and the Editorial Page editor, Bob Kittle, gave me prime newspaper real estate on Saturdays and Mondays to do my editorial cartoons. It was such an awesome opportunity... and even then I knew it was a huge kindness I wanted to pay forward when I got the chance.

So, in my Mattel years, I sponsored 3 or 4 summer interns through our "Design Center" to show them the world of toys... and so far with Sheldon I've been lucky enough to have one fantastic intern: Ignacio (...who, if I can take a minute to play the "proud poppa" role, is now working on CGI for James Cameron's new flick "Avatar". I'll expect premiere tickets, Iggy!).

Anyway, over the last few months I've been doing a few talks 'n lectures at local universities... and after one of them, a professor asked if I'd be willing to take on an intern for the summer. She forwarded on a glowing recommendation of Stephanie — and it just seemed like a great fit.

Stephanie started today, and over the summer will be helping out with as wide a variety of tasks as she'd like to take on: Like handling the strip transcriptions for the site, archiving some of the original art, helping to research some stuff for an NPR piece I'm working on, and if I can talk her into it...blogging here from time to time about how her internship is going. She'll also be helping out with the next Sheldon book, and possibly coming down to San Diego Comic-Con to check out the spectacle for a day (I told her it was "125,000 super huge nerds in a super huge convention center," and she still seemed enthusiastic. That earned her some points.)

You'll be hearing more from Stephanie personally in the blog about how the internship is going... but for now, feel free to post below and make her feel welcome!

[EDITED: Steph now has an "@sheldoncomics.com" e-mail! Drop her a line here to say hi!]