Koch Foundation Internship

so many opportunities it makes my head woozy

Spring - Summer - Fall
Washington, DC

The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation Internship Program was established to develop the next generation of liberty-minded leaders and entrepreneurs. Over the course of the program, Interns engage in key Foundation projects while learning and applying Market-Based Management.

The project assignments cover fascinating areas including policy research, leadership and talent development, grassroots education, marketing, and network development. This hands-on experience gives interns the chance to explore the non-profit sector while applying the management philosophy they are learning from the Foundation, and allows them to build a network of like-minded friends and associates.

Each Intern is assigned a Foundation mentor for the duration of the program. The mentor will guide the Interns through assignments, assist them in learning the management framework and applying it to their non-profit work, and encourage them to become effective entrepreneurs for social change.

Spring and fall Internships are part-time and flexible, but interns must be available at least 20 hours each week, including all day on Tuesdays. Summer Interns are also part-time, but interns work regular schedules, 8:30am-5:30pm, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. Spring, summer, and fall Interns do not work on Thursdays. Spring and fall Interns are paid an hourly rate of $12.00. Summer Interns are paid an hourly rate of $13.00. Metro assistance is available only for summer Interns. Unfortunately, housing is not provided.

Find out more here.

Teach For America Summer Institute Training Positions

More more more opportunities

In the summer of 2008, Teach For America will run six institutes in Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and Phoenix. Across the six institutes, about 3,400 new Teach For America corps members will come together for an intensive five-week, pre-service training program. The purpose of the institute is to prepare corps members to assume full-time teaching responsibilities in the fall and produce significant academic gains with their students. Each institute team also works closely with local school districts so that new corps members can deliver a rigorous academic summer school program to more than 1,500 children in that school district.

Find out more here.

USAID Paid Summer Internships DC

Another great summer opportunity within your grasp...

Summer 2008 Internships

USAID has twelve Summer 2008 paid internships available in the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia located in Washington, D.C. This is an excellent opportunity for outstanding students interested in pursuing careers in international development. Interested students are encouraged to visit the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia website (http://www.usaid.gov/locations/europe_eurasia/) to familiarize themselves with USAID’s work in the region and identify areas of particular interest.

The criteria for selection are:

• Students must be U.S. citizens. Selected students will be required to undergo a security clearance process and sign a personal services contract.
• Students must be university or college students (juniors, seniors or graduate students).
• Application requirements are:
• A Letter of Interest
• A resume or Curriculum Vitae
• Two letters of reference
• Applicants should be studying relevant disciplines (public policy, international relations, economics, journalism, agriculture, public administration, law, political science, health, science, finance, etc.).
• Flexibility, initiative, enthusiasm, good interpersonal skills and lots of energy are desired. Computer skills are a necessity.

Normally, the internships are for a duration of ten weeks and commence from late May through mid-June. Due to the large number of applications received, we may be unable to respond to all of the applicants individually. We hope to contact candidates under consideration by late-February or early-March.

USAID is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

For additional information on these internship positions and instructions for applying, view this solicitation in either: Microsoft Word (182kb) or Adobe Acrobat PDF (280kb).

UPDATED: Jobs--Congressman Adam Smith, DC

I break holiday blog silence for this; thanks to Andrea Tull '02 for passing these along. Join the UPS PG mafia in Adam Smith's office in DC:

Pacific NW Democrat seeks Staff Assistant - Member seeks staffer to handle front office duties including answering phones, greeting constituents, setting up tours and processing flag requests. Candidate should have strong written and oral communication skills and have the ability to work in fast-paced office. Pacific Northwest ties and sense of humor are a plus. No calls or drop-bys. Salary depends on experience. Please email resume and cover letter to WA09StaffAssistantResumes@mail.house.gov

Northwest Democrat seeks Scheduler/Systems Administrator. This position
manages and maintains the Member's DC schedule and travel plans; manages
the Internship program for the office; manages office IT and technology
systems; monitors compliance with House rules and polices. Must have
great attention to detail, be friendly, have a good sense of humor and
enjoy working in a fast paced office. Washington State or Northwest ties
are a plus. Please email your resume and cover letter to:
smithscheduler@mail.house.gov . No calls or walk-ins.

we now return to our regularly scheduled nonblogging.

Happy Holidays!

The Politics and Government blog will go on hiatus for the holidays, and we'll be back in the New Year. So for now best wishes and we hope your holiday is the best it can be, wherever you may be.

Really bad writing

From Dan Drezner's blog, a roundup of howlers being read in student essays of late. A few of my favorites:

"…it showed how long people were willing to fight for their belief and freedom. Nine years is a very long time for a war. Especially since it was the French and Indians fighting, two of the most savage peoples of that era.”

"Russia stayed out of the First World War because Stalin was in Africa fighting."

"The United States used carrot sticks to encourage the military leaders of Haiti to back down during this crisis."

Read the whole selection here! Of course, faculty are themselves masters of prose.

Is email dead?

I've been mumbling for some time about the decline of email use among students, and what effect it has on communicating with them, or what the implications will be for the business world. Will this mean that students will have to confront email and abandoned their text messaging when they get a job? Or that email is down for the count, and businesses will have to adapt.

Slate thinks it's the latter. Me, I'm not so sure. And anyway, with gmail, email, instant messaging and text on your phone are all bundled. Social networks will be next. So I think it's probably less the death of any one format and the collection of many formats in one place, for different forms (and formalities) of communication.

ICPSR Undergraduate Paper Competition

I am writing to remind you about the ICPSR Undergraduate Research Paper Competitions - and to remind you that ICPSR is sponsoring two undergraduate research paper competitions for the 2007/2008 academic year. The first competition, sponsored by the general archive at ICPSR, requires a research paper supported by quantitative analysis of any dataset(s) held within the ICPSR archive or any of its special topic archives.

The second competition is sponsored by the Minority Data Resource Center (MDRC). The paper must address issues relevant to underrepresented minorities in the United States including immigrants, and data must be drawn from the MDRC. A separate committee will be formed to judge this competition.

With the exception of the dataset and topic requirements, the competitions are identical in awards, eligibility, and preparation requirements.

The purpose of these competitions is to highlight the best undergraduate student research papers using quantitative data. The objective is to encourage undergraduates to explore the social sciences by means of critical analysis of a topic supported by quantitative analysis of a dataset(s) held within the ICPSR archives and presented in written form.

· Up to three cash prizes will be awarded for each competition. The winner will receive a monetary award of $1,000. Second place receives $750 and third place $500.

· Deadline for submission is January 31, 2008.

Flyers appropriate for sharing with students and faculty as a means to promote the competition and recruit student authors are available on the website. More details can be found at: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/prize/.

What better way than to spend the upcoming holiday break preparing the research paper for submission - please remind your undergraduate students!

Linda Detterman
Marketing & Membership Director
ICPSR
University of Michigan
lindamd@umich.edu
734.615.5494

Students: Summer research job in Politics and Government

PG majors and minors: This summer Professor Fields, Share and I will be working on the third edition of our Essentials of Comparative Politics textbooks. We've secured $1500 to hire a research assistant to help us with our work. The hours would be flexible, but you'd need to be in town during the first part of summer to work with us. We would also prefer that you've taken PG 102 at a minimum, so you're familiar with the work; upper division courses in comparative politics would be helpful. If you're interested, send me an email. And as an added bonus, your name will go in the preface, guaranteeing fame and the envy of all your rivals. Don't delay!

Social Scientists love Facebook

Yes, social networks are the new world of adventure. From the New York Times:

But it is Facebook’s role as a petri dish for the social sciences — sociology, psychology and political science — that particularly excites some scholars, because the site lets them examine how people, especially young people, are connected to one another, something few data sets offer, the scholars say.

Social scientists at Indiana, Northwestern, Pennsylvania State, Tufts, the University of Texas and other institutions are mining Facebook to test traditional theories in their fields about relationships, identity, self-esteem, popularity, collective action, race and political engagement.

Read the whole article here. I was particularly pleased because they referenced a study on Facebook I had assigned this semester; made me feel like I'd "scooped" the Times. I think if I weren't a professor, I'd like to be a coolhunter.

Presidential Bid-ness

If you believe in the wisdom of crowds, then prediction markets should give us a pretty good idea of who is going to win in the upcoming primary elections in Iowa and New Hampshire. Check out the following from Intrade, where people are betting real money on these races. As of today, Obama's got an overwhelming lead over Clinton (60% to 30%) in Iowa, while Clinton has inched back ahead of Obama in New Hampshire after losing her commanding lead (49% to 45%). For the Republicans, Iowa is Huckabee over Romney (64% to 25%), and New Hampshire Romney over McCain (55% to 15%).

Global Institute Summer Program: Prague, Boulder

Interesting? Interested? Easly deadline December 15, but

In today's world, it is of pressing importance that tomorrow's leaders have a global perspective. The new millennium brings with it many opportunities and challenges. As a member of this ever changing world, the decisions you make today not only affect you, but others around you. What type of impact are you going to leave on our world? We invite you to spend four weeks in Prague, Czech Republic or in the Rocky Mountains of the United States training to become a global citizen, a future leader, and among tomorrow's great social innovators.

Obtain new skills and knowledge
Think critically about the problems we face today
Meet people from around the world
Broaden your knowledge about diverse cultures, societies, and peoples
Learn the fundamental skills of making progressive and lasting change in our world
Jump the gap from dreaming to doing

Dedicated to making the theoretical real, the scholars of the Global Institute will benefit through the provision of high quality leadership and civic development training in an international setting. In addition, the participants will not only learn about foreign cultures but they will communicate with, live with, study with, and learn from international students with diverse perspectives, beliefs, cultures, and upbringings. The Global Institute is dedicated to developing extraordinary leaders capable of leading ground-breaking innovation in their fields and in the global community.

Professor Weinberger Blogs the Manama Dialogue

As he did last year, Professor Weinberger was invited to blog the plenary session of the Manama Dialogue, an annual conference on international security held in Bahrain. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the guest speaker, and Professor Weinberger has an extensive reprise of his presentation, the questions from the audience, and his own thoughts on what was discussed (in large part, Iran and Iraq). Find Professor Weinberger's post here.

Foreign Language Fellowships

Here are a couple of great opportunities students (and alums in grad school) should consider.

1. The National Flagship Language Program
The Language Flagship leads the nation in designing, supporting, and implementing a new paradigm for advanced language education. Through an innovative partnership between the federal government, education, and business, The Language Flagship seeks to graduate students who will take their place among the next generation of global professionals, commanding a superior level of fluency in one of many languages critical to U.S. competitiveness and security.

The Language Flagship, initiated in 2002 as the National Flagship Language Program, represents a bold and unprecedented effort to address the urgent need for professionals with advanced competency in critical languages. Through a combination of innovative and intensive campus curricula and overseas immersion, each full-time Flagship Program is designed to achieve professional proficiency, or level 3 as designated by the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) in the target language. Flagship programs are now available in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Korean, Persian/Farsi, and Eurasian Languages (Russian, Central Asian). More details here; deadline is January 18

2. Department of State Critical Language Scholarships
Sponsored by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, the Critical Language Scholarships Program was launched in 2006. In its inaugural year, the Program offered intensive overseas study in the critical need foreign languages of Arabic, Bangla/Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Turkish and Urdu. In 2007, Chinese, Korean, Persian, and Russian institutes were added along with increased student capacity in the inaugural language institutes. The Program is part of the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI), a U.S. government interagency effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical need foreign languages. Scholarship recipients - U.S. citizen undergraduate, Master's and Ph.D. students and recent graduates - receive funding to participate in beginning, intermediate and advanced level summer language programs at American Overseas Research Centers and affiliated partners. Recipients are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship period and later apply their critical language skills in their professional careers.

Information on the 2008 institutes and application process will be available in mid-December. Click here to be notified by email when program information and the on-line application system are available. General information here.

Weren't you going to apply for that conference in Seattle?

I know you were, but you got busy with the end of the semester. So don't forget; the deadline is January 15. Seattle, scholarships, looks great on a vita, crazy not to apply, you know the spiel.

'Crossing Borders - Issues & Resolutions' A Conference & Debate for U.S. & Canadian University Students (WA, OR, ID, BC, AB) Seattle WA 6-7 March 2008
All the details and application are here.

A round up of student kudos

A few congrats to students who will be doing things of note in the coming semester:

Alexandra Raposo '08 has been selected for an internship with the Washington State Democrats. She is currently working for Congressman Adam Smith.

Torey Holderith '09 has been selected to participate in the 2007 Air Force Academy conference "Dismantling Terrorism: Developing Actionable Solutions for Today’s Plague of Violence.”

Jon Roberts '10 has been selected to present his paper, "The Third Place Question in New Urbanism: Urban Parks as an Indicator of Social Capital in Cleveland and Seattle" at the Thompson Rivers Undergraduate Conference in History, Philosophy, and Politics in British Columbia.

Congrats, all!

More DC jobs--right now--

This in from Shalen Fairbanks '96. Email me if you would like her email address--

Hi Professor O'Neil,
I'm hiring for a specialist and an associate specialist in the Corporate Communications Department at the American College of Cardiology in D.C. Both
positions would work very closely with the Advocacy and Quality divisions at the College. The pay and benefits are great (including tuition assistance for
grad school). They are good positions for someone interested in politics and communications. The link to the job site is:
http://tbe.taleo.net/NA2/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=ACC&cws=1&rid=94.

Interested persons can contact me directly, or make sure to include my name in their cover letter when applying through the Web site.

Thanks!

Shalen Fairbanks '96

P.S. There will also be several Advocacy Division-related jobs available in January as well.

Alumi Online Network

Today we had our first meeting of the alumni online taskforce, a group of alums, students, staff, and faculty to help shape the next generation of online resources to connect alums. We phone and online conferenced with the vendor, and looked at some interesting sites, including Mount Holyoke, Duke, and Harvard.

There's lots of good stuff here, but I felt like all of these sites (and the technology behind them) were behind the curve. As an alum, can I create easy links to LinkedIn and Facebook? Import and export contacts? Upload video or images to self-created groups? Feed content to things like a Blackberry? As importantly, shouldn't these systems be linked into Admissions so that prospective students could have the ability to see what alums have done and, with permission, be able to contact alums about what life is like at Puget Sound? There's so much we could do here in creating a single "life cycle" experience for our students, from pre-student to alum phase, that is more seamless. It's not that UPS is behind--I think everyone is behind on this, while social networking companies wind up capturing our attention and connections.

I'll keep you posted on this as the work develops. We've got quite a bit to do in the coming year.

One last discussion point was what to name this thing. Logger Online? Linking Loggers? Logger.net? I suggested logos, but maybe that's too snooty sounding. Anyone else out there have some good ideas for a catchy name for the alum network?

Welcome, Molly Tamarkin!

Some weeks back I noted that I was serving on the search committee for a new Chief Technology Officer for the university. I was pleased to hear that the university has secured Molly Tamarkin for the position. In our search Ms. Tamarkin was an impressive candidate, and I was personally taken by the way in which she had come to technology through a liberal arts education. We also had some fun emails back and forth joking about Second Life, which as you've seen is my latest running joke (see comment from her in my SL post just below). Here's part of the email from Vice President for Finance and Administration Sherry Mondou:

Molly comes to Puget Sound from Duke University, where she currently serves as associate dean of Arts & Sciences Information Science & Technology. At Duke University, Molly led and developed information technology services for a community of more than 20,000 faculty, students, and staff. She previously served as director of information technology at the Graduate Center of Marlboro College in Vermont, where she held a faculty appointment in the Teaching and Technology program. Prior to her career in information technology, Molly served as Marlboro’s library director, and held positions with Welles-Turner Memorial Library in Connecticut, Brooklyn Public Library in New York, St. Louis Public Library in Missouri, and the University of Chicago Libraries.

Molly has a national profile in her field, having published several papers and frequently participating on panels discussing information technology issues in higher education at conferences throughout the country. She earned a bachelor’s degree in behavioral sciences from the University of Chicago in 1986, a master’s degree in library science from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1990, and master of fine arts degree in English from the University of Florida in 1992.

Here's a podcast with Ms. Tamarkin from 2005 where she talks about technology, organization, and leadership.

A final note is the Duke is known for a recent initiative where they distributed ipods to encourage podcasting. Ms. Tamarkin, I'll take mine in black, please.

Don't bother with I-5

The nasty weather here earlier in the week has I-5 flooded between Centralia and Chehalis. Word is that the road should be open by the weekend. In the meantime, you can get real-time images (where the above picture came from) from the Department of Transportation camera here.

Build it virtually and they won't learn, either

From the College of Higher Education (hat tip: Professor Weinberger):

Colleges worldwide are establishing their presence in Second Life to advertise their programs, conduct online classes or conferences, and do research. At least 170 such campuses can be found there, says an article in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Social Sciences.

But the virtual campuses he has seen, says Mr. Ludlow, lack imagination because they duplicate real institutions.

"Is that what you've got if you could start over, and you're not constrained by the laws of physics, and you could build whatever you want to enhance learning?" he asks. "What kind of message are you sending when you say, 'If I could create the ideal learning environment, I would duplicate Building 7 and go to work?'"....

Mr. Ludlow tried to teach a freshman seminar in Second Life on issues arising in multiplayer online worlds. He and his students were represented by avatars. But it wasn't successful, he says, because avatars don't communicate as richly as people do.

"When I'm teaching in a classroom, I can read the body language of students," says the philosopher. "I can tell if it's too warm. I can tell if they're tired. I can tell if they're looking quizzical because they don't understand. I don't get any of that feedback when I'm trying to address students online."

And here I was looking forward to teaching my courses from home, through an avatar of a giant robot. Read the whole article here.

Build it and they will come?

From the Economist, an interesting piece on the campus construction boom, especially in the sciences, and questions about whether bigger is really better:

...according to the Department of Education, the average annual cost of a standard four-year course at an American university has trebled since the 1985-86 school year. Ohio University increased its tuition fees by 2% to pay for its student centre, which contains a 250-seat theatre, a food court and a five-storey atrium. In addition, universities are increasingly being forced to rely on debt....Hiring more teaching staff and cutting class sizes would probably be of more help to undergraduates than much of the new construction. Universities such as Harvard may have the money available to improve their faculty to student ratio, allocate cash for assisting poorer students and go on competing in the building frenzy. But others do not have that luxury...

Read the whole thing here.

Food Drive

The Food Salvage Program and the Staff Senate is holding a food drive December 3-7, 2007. We have placed a box in the PG department to collect donations. Do you have something to share? Bring it by and help someone for the holidays.

Want a paid internship in DC in January?

Short notice, yes. But perhaps you're graduating in December, or are an alum who is looking for a transition to DC? Congressional Committee on Science and Technology--what could be cooler than that?

From: Steep, Stacey
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 3:37 PM
Subject: Have any interns for the Committee?

Hi everyone,

Do you know of anyone in your districts (or anywhere else) who would be interested in a winter internship with the Committee? If so, the internship starts in January, lasts 120 days, and pays $1,500/month. Here's the link to the Committee website www.science.house.gov and the intern application http://www.science.house.gov/docs/intern_apply.pdf (which can be sent to Bess Caughran at bess.caughran@mail.house.gov).

Thank you and hope all is well!
Stacey Steep
Research Assistant
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment &
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight
Committee on Science and Technology
2319 RHOB
(202) 225-8844

Kari Manlove '06: DC opportunites, Center for American Progress

Thanks for Kari for thinking of us. A great place to intern as well--that's how Kari got her start at CAP:

Hi Professor,

So, I'm always trying to get UPS students to either intern here at CAP, with Campus Progress or the think-tank, or check out jobs here. If you don't mind, I try to send e-mails whenever I remember it may be good timing. Anyway, if there are any students graduating in December, at semester, and looking to come out to DC afterwards, this is an ideal time to look at jobs (even though I know it coincides with finals), and there are a handful of entry-level assistant positions open at CAP. The webpage is here: http://www.americanprogress.org/aboutus/jobs. For example, we're looking for a Fellows Assistant (what I do but diff. boss) on climate strategy, and special assistants to the Econ team, the Development team, the Executive VP of policy, and I do believe an Executive Assistant to John Podesta shortly. CAP is a great organization to get your foot in the door, especially as the election gears up. I guess I'm just so eager for a UPS student to take interest in CAP because it's a great starting off place.

Cheers,
Kari.

Senior requests alum input

Any alums out there working in political campaigns who could provide some feedback to Callie? See below--

For my senior seminar in Communication Studies at UPS, I am conducting an experiment regarding how an increased use of technology within the workplace has altered the jobs and behaviors of those involved with political campaigns. I have interviewed/given questionnaires to several UPS alums and it has been extremely success! So...if you currently or have recently worked on political campaigns and would be interested in participating in this study, please send me an interest email to: csnyder@ups.edu. Thanks again and I look forward to talking to some of you!

Callie Snyder '08

Student-Faculty-Alum Holiday Fest this Friday

Students, faculty, see you there! Alums, please join us as well!