Hamilton’s Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center has joined the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty (SHECP), a collaboration among 26 other colleges and universities that integrates classroom study of poverty with summer internships and co-curricular activities.
“Their [Hamilton’s] addition to the consortium will enhance the breadth of our programming by expanding opportunities to study the meanings, causes, and consequences of poverty across a wide range of disciplines,” said Dr. Brett Morash, SHECP executive director.
As a consortium member, the Levitt Center will offer students the opportunity to participate in the SHECP Summer Internship Program. This eight-week program pairs students with nonprofit organizations that work to strengthen impoverished communities.
Students are matched with agencies that fit their intellectual interests in order to develop professional experience and skills for future civic involvement and employment. This past summer, SHECP interns provided more than 36,400 hours of service to 96 agencies, in 21 different geographic locations.
“I am so pleased that SHECP has invited Hamilton College into this distinguished group of colleges and universities,” said Suzanne Keen, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty. “All the SHECP colleges strive to integrate experiential learning with a rigorous academic framework, and Hamilton faculty have already responded with enthusiasm to the curricular development challenge. SHECP's network of community partners is unrivaled in quality and in commitment to battling poverty and inequality on the ground.”
“This alliance will also help us to identify a wider range of internship opportunities -- in veterans' affairs, legal services, health and wellness, food advocacy, among other areas – while providing a communal living experience and pre-internship training and post-internship conferences that will help our students connect their academic work with their internship experiences,” said Levitt Center Director and Professor of Philosophy Marianne Janack. “We appreciate this significant expansion of the opportunities we will be able to offer our students.”
