Testing the waters

WARTBURG MAGAZINE | SPRING 2026 DIGITAL ISSUE

Leah Cherry’s summer internship in Juneau meant late-night wastewater sampling, hands-on experience in a lab, and a firsthand look at the science behind environmental protection

March 5, 2026

At 3 a.m., when most cruise ship passengers were fast asleep, Leah Cherry ’26 was already up and prepping for the day ahead. Hours earlier, she might have been enjoying a meal in the ship’s dining room or squeezing in a workout to stay in shape for her final Wartburg track season. But when the alarm sounded in the middle of the night, Cherry was all business.

Upon leaving her room — sometimes nestled among the other guests and other times down with the crew — she would meet up with the ship’s environmental officer, and they would make their way deep below deck to the engine room. During the busy season, an average of five ships port in Juneau, Alaska, each day, where they face some of the most stringent environmental standards in the world. As an intern for Admiralty Environmental, a private environmental consulting company and certified laboratory in Juneau, Cherry was charged with ensuring those standards were met.

“There are rules about how far away from ports and national parks the ships have to be when they discharge their treated wastewater, so that usually meant I was taking samples in the middle of the night,” Cherry said. “I would collect the samples I needed, do the field tests that needed to complete within minutes of collection, and then put the other samples on ice for the lab.”

Shortly after sunrise, Cherry would disembark and make her way through customs before catching a short flight back to Juneau, where she headed straight to the office so additional tests could be completed. She would then spend a day or two in the lab before hopping aboard the next cruise ship and starting all over.

“This was my first taste of doing something with regulatory testing, and I really liked the combination of office work and field work,” said Cherry, who hopes to someday work in environmental consulting — though she expects her work will be in the Lower 48.

Hope VanZinderen O’Neill ’12 can’t imagine being anywhere else. Now in her 13^th year with Admiralty Environmental, she has worked her way up from a laboratory technician to president and co-owner.

As a senior at Wartburg, O’Neill’s final Wartburg College course was Environmental Chemistry with Dr. Christine DeVries. She remembers testing soil and water samples collected from around Bremer County and visiting the wastewater treatment plant’s onsite lab where industrial discharges are tested and monitored. For O’Neill, a biology major, the experience opened her eyes to the opportunities that existed for her outside of a career in medicine.

“When I was hired, the owners liked my direct water sampling experience from my lab classes and my chemistry minor. I liked that I got to work in a lab but didn’t have to worry about writing grants to find funding for my work,” she said.

In addition to monitoring and testing cruise ship wastewater, O’Neill’s team also does testing for Alaskan water treatment facilities, which are usually very rural and not large enough to staff an on-site lab. During cruise ship season, Admiralty’s nine-person staff nearly doubles with interns, but last summer was the first time O’Neill welcomed a fellow Knight.

DeVries, who is still teaching the Environmental Chemistry course during May Term, shared the internship opportunity with her students in hopes of making a Wartburg connection. A few weeks later, Cherry and her dad packed up the car — she had to have a vehicle on-site for the summer — for the 45-hour drive. They broke up the drive with pitstops in Banff and Jasper national parks before boarding a ferry for the final six hours of the trip.

Hope VanZinderen O'Neill (right) tests water with a colleague. — Hope VanZinderen O’Neill (right) tests water with a colleague at Admiralty Environmental.

For O’Neill the decision to bring Cherry on for the summer was an easy one.

“Given my experience at Wartburg, I could look at the coursework she had completed and her GPA and know she would be prepared for the work that we do, and that’s not always the case with other schools.”

“Her interview just validated that for me. And she’s from Wartburg, so that was just really special for me. I loved my time in college so much. I loved my professors and the campus, so it was fun to share some of that with someone who understood,” O’Neill

Though O’Neill, who grew up in northern Minnesota, has no plans to leave Alaska, she does hope to have more Wartburg students apply for summer internships.

“I love what we do here. It’s cyclical in nature, but every week is a little different. And I love getting to work with the younger people we hire for these seasonal positions,” O’Neill said. “Having the opportunity to expose them to another side of science and a possible career opportunity is such a wonderful experience. And for them it’s so validating when you realize that you are using the skills you learned in college.”