While many students use the summer to explore new professional opportunities, Susan Stanton '09 (Lafayette, Pa.) is sticking with what she knows. Stanton, who participated in the Hamilton Program in Washington last semester, started an internship with the National Organization for Women (NOW) in March and knew she was onto a good thing. "I really wanted to stay with NOW to continue some of my projects and working for causes that I truly believed in," she says.
Work experience is becoming increasingly important for students after college, but often internships are unpaid and require the students to cover their own living expenses as well as working for free. To remain with NOW over the summer, Stanton applied for a stipend from the Joseph F. Anderson Internship Fund, given in honor of a 1944 Hamilton graduate who served the college for 18 years as vice president for communications and development. The fund in his name provides individual stipends to support full-time internships for students wishing to expand their educational horizons in preparation for potential careers after graduation.
This summer, Stanton is living in Washington for two months while she works in the organization's public policy section. Established in 1966, NOW has grown to over half a million members, the largest and most comprehensive feminist advocacy group in the United States, and much of Stanton's work involves tracking legislation. She focuses on issues such as women's health, healthcare disparities, and immigration questions, watching important bills when they head to a committee or come to a vote. She attends hearings and briefings on the bills and reports back the organization's officers, and if a bill is of concern, she writes an "action alert" summarizing the relevant issue and how the bill will affect it. The action alert is then sent to all of NOW's members and published on the group's website.
An additional part of Stanton's job recently has been to coordinate workshops for the organization's upcoming national conference, held in Bethesda, Md. She is helping to organize the groups and book panelists, and has thus been able to talk to many leaders in the feminist field. "I have been most shocked about the amazing and important feminists I have had the opportunity to meet," Stanton says. "The women I've met have changed the lives for women everywhere through action, which is something I aspire to." She has also begun to work with the National Coalition for Immigrant Women's Rights (NCIWR), attending meetings on immigration issues and coordinating, managing and co-writing the coalition's second newsletter.
Although she has held two internships previously, this is Stanton's first experience working for an advocacy organization. Two summers ago, she worked as a theatre camp assistant teacher for Theatre Horizons, and last January was an intern in the office of Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz on Capitol Hill. Her internship with NOW is substantially different from her previous work teaching and learning about the world of policy-making, however. "At NOW I've gotten much closer to experience in a career I might want to pursue one day," she says.
Stanton says that she is not entirely sure what she intends to pursue after graduation, but she is definitely considering feminist issues in public policy as a possible career. "In general it's a lot of work and a lot of long hours," she says. "But if you're patient and are in the right place at the right time you'll get to do a lot of great things."
-- by Laura Bramley
Work experience is becoming increasingly important for students after college, but often internships are unpaid and require the students to cover their own living expenses as well as working for free. To remain with NOW over the summer, Stanton applied for a stipend from the Joseph F. Anderson Internship Fund, given in honor of a 1944 Hamilton graduate who served the college for 18 years as vice president for communications and development. The fund in his name provides individual stipends to support full-time internships for students wishing to expand their educational horizons in preparation for potential careers after graduation.
This summer, Stanton is living in Washington for two months while she works in the organization's public policy section. Established in 1966, NOW has grown to over half a million members, the largest and most comprehensive feminist advocacy group in the United States, and much of Stanton's work involves tracking legislation. She focuses on issues such as women's health, healthcare disparities, and immigration questions, watching important bills when they head to a committee or come to a vote. She attends hearings and briefings on the bills and reports back the organization's officers, and if a bill is of concern, she writes an "action alert" summarizing the relevant issue and how the bill will affect it. The action alert is then sent to all of NOW's members and published on the group's website.
An additional part of Stanton's job recently has been to coordinate workshops for the organization's upcoming national conference, held in Bethesda, Md. She is helping to organize the groups and book panelists, and has thus been able to talk to many leaders in the feminist field. "I have been most shocked about the amazing and important feminists I have had the opportunity to meet," Stanton says. "The women I've met have changed the lives for women everywhere through action, which is something I aspire to." She has also begun to work with the National Coalition for Immigrant Women's Rights (NCIWR), attending meetings on immigration issues and coordinating, managing and co-writing the coalition's second newsletter.
Although she has held two internships previously, this is Stanton's first experience working for an advocacy organization. Two summers ago, she worked as a theatre camp assistant teacher for Theatre Horizons, and last January was an intern in the office of Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz on Capitol Hill. Her internship with NOW is substantially different from her previous work teaching and learning about the world of policy-making, however. "At NOW I've gotten much closer to experience in a career I might want to pursue one day," she says.
Stanton says that she is not entirely sure what she intends to pursue after graduation, but she is definitely considering feminist issues in public policy as a possible career. "In general it's a lot of work and a lot of long hours," she says. "But if you're patient and are in the right place at the right time you'll get to do a lot of great things."
-- by Laura Bramley
