Check Out Levi Endelman's Amazing Internship!

Greetings from Denver! My name is Levi Endelman and I’m a rising fourth year biochemistry and biology major out here at Wartburg West. My internship out here is with the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner (DOME) at Denver Health. My internship placement is unique in that I am the first Wartburg student (and potentially the first Iowan) to intern at the medical examiner’s office.

I am just beginning my third week at my internship and I love it. My duties include assisting with all of the daily operations of the morgue and, when there are cases to be completed, I assist with autopsies and external examinations. I’ve learned how to do everything from forensic photography to fingerprinting to drawing vitreous humor samples (if you want to know what that is, look it up; I won’t put it here for the sake of people who don’t want to know what that involves). In the next couple of weeks I will also be taught how to properly open the skull cap during an autopsy in order to remove the brain, brain stem, and pituitary gland to aid in the determination of the cause of death.

Thus far, this internship has been everything I had hoped it would be and more. I am one of about twelve interns that rotate through every few days. I work 3-4 days per week for 8.5-11 hours per day. This internship has allowed me to apply several of the things that I have learned in my anatomy and physiology and biochemistry classes at Wartburg. The learning pace at this internship has been extremely fast, but I have felt well equipped to handle it. I have felt very welcomed at this internship and the technicians who supervise us interns are absolutely phenomenal people.

. I am in the process of applying to another internship at the medical examiner’s office in Boulder County to the northwest where I will be doing approximately the same thing. This will push my weekly time commitment to somewhere around 40-55 hours per week, which I think is awesome as I want to capitalize upon the opportunities out here while I can. I’m enjoying myself and my internship.