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Wearing a wedding gown on television? It's all in a day's work for Vanessa Cruz-Santana '10 (Santa Ana, Calif.), who is interning this summer at KDOC TV, a local television station in Orange County, Calif. Cruz-Santana is interning for "Daybreak OC," a morning news show that reports on local news in Orange County.

Caroline Miller '09 has returned home this summer, and taken her academic interests with her. The rising senior from Wayzata, Minn. is pursuing two internships based in St. Paul, one with the archaeological department of the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), and the other as a historical research intern for the Northwoods Initiative at the Trust for Public Land (TPL).

As a creative writing major at Hamilton, Laurel Symonds '10 (Harwinton, Conn.) is always working with manuscripts, but this summer is special. Symonds is an editorial intern in the children's books department of Bloomsbury USA, a small publishing house in New York City. She reads solicited manuscripts (those the company has received from literary agents) and decides whether she thinks they are worth publishing.

As the European Union becomes ever more of a cohesive political entity, its place in the arena of international affairs is a matter of increasing interest in the U.S. "The formation of an increasingly powerful Union resonates in the American mind," says Zachary Cohen '09, a politics major from Brooklyn, N.Y., recalling images of "the last world power, the Soviet Union." Since America has recently enjoyed a role as the world's only superpower, Cohen says, it is important to study the nation's evolving view of the European Union.

"Watch out for the mountain lions," Megan Herman '09 (Orchard Park, N.Y.) heard from her co-workers at as she left for her first morning run at her summer job. Although Herman didn't take the warning seriously, it wasn't intended as a joke: the rising senior is far from home this summer, working in Fraser, Colo. at Crooked Creek Ranch summer camp, and when she returned from running, the other interns were upset that she hadn't taken a running buddy along. Herman is using her EMT training and organizational skills to work as a summer EMT intern at the camp, which is run by Young Life, a non-denominational Christian organization that focuses on reaching out to adolescents through youth groups and camps.

Local history can be difficult to incorporate into the needs of the present. In the Mohawk Valley and particularly in Utica, the debate continues over whether historic sites should be preserved or the often dormant, rundown buildings should be demolished to support needed economic development. While spectacular renovation efforts on buildings such as the Hotel Utica and the Stanley Theatre take showcase preservation, many abandoned buildings in Utica are demolished to promote relevant modern use of the space, or because they are potential targets of arson. Arson is the top destroyer of historic buildings, and this year, 22 have been confirmed in the Utica area.

The HOPE VI Project in Utica, which provided $11.5 million in federal funds to restructure public housing for low-income residents, will end this September. Stephanie Wong '10 (Amherst, Mass.) is working this summer as an assistant with Hamilton's program evaluation of the project, which is supervised by Judith Owens-Manley, associate director for community research at the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center. Wong received a Community-Based Research Fellowship from the Levitt Center to work with Owens-Manley in the final stage of evaluating the program, assembling, organizing and presenting the materials Hamilton has collected over HOPE VI's five-year tenure in the area.

Last fall, Maura Donovan '09 (Haverhill, Mass.) went to South Africa to spend a semester studying at the International Human Rights Exchange, based at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She studied human rights and interned at the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a small human rights organization that operates out of Johannesburg. "It was my first peek into human rights work," she says.

Elizabeth Kessler '10 finds that helping people can be a full-time job. For her internship this summer, Kessler is working at the Family Partnership Center (FPC) in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She helps the president of the center to coordinate initiatives and facilitate collaboration between the 23 organizations in the building, in order enrich relationships within the center and improve its services. "If these organizations do not reach out to each other, the FPC becomes just one more regular old office building," she says.

Bill Purcell '76 has been appointed director of Harvard's Institute of Politics (IOP) at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, starting September 1. The former mayor of Nashville, Tenn., Purcell has worked in public service, law and higher education for more than 30 years. He will succeed former U.S. Congressman James A. Leach (R-IA), who served as IOP director for the 2007-08 academic year.