Student Programs

Interning inside the Beltway

In the UC Berkeley Washington Program, undergrads get a taste of life, work, and how things get done in the nation’s capital

By Cathy Cockrell

Colin Foe-Parker, like his sister Jenners before him, plans to spend a semester in the UCDC program. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Coe)

Summer 2007 | Cal parents Stephanie Foe and Jim Parker feel strongly that the college experience, at its best, is not a mad dash for the finish line but an opportunity to experience different learning environments.

So they were pleased when one day in class their daughter, Jenners Foe-Parker, heard a presentation on the UC Berkeley Washington Program (UCDC), through which undergraduates take semester-long internships inside the capital Beltway and attend college classes in the evenings.

With a little nudge from mom, Jenners investigated, concluding that an internship in a health-related government agency would be a “really nice way to consolidate my interests” in political science and medicine, she says.

She applied for the program, and in fall 2004 moved outside her comfort zone — and the borders of her home state — to the University of California Washington Center, 11 blocks from the White House. As an intern in Washington at the national Institute of Medicine, she helped plan two conferences and did research on the obesity epidemic.

“I honestly look at UCDC as a keystone experience of my college career,” Foe-Parker now recalls. “You study and learn all these things in college,” and then, in Washington, “you go out in the real world and see how it all fits together.”

UCDC’s head Michael Goldstein (Joanne Connelly photo)

Which is not to say it’s easy. “For most of these students, this is the most difficult thing they’ve ever done in their undergrad career,” says political-science professor Michael Goldstein, who heads UCDC and teaches its core research seminar. “The setting is totally different” from Berkeley and “requires different skills to achieve.”

Such skills include navigating a bureaucracy to secure a coveted assignment. Or writing a major research paper — the centerpiece of students’ academic experience — while holding down a day job. Back on campus, he notes, it’s possible to pull a series of 11th-hour all-nighters and still finish the semester. “You can’t do that here,” he says. “You have to be at work in the morning.”

Stepping stones to the future

Cal parent Sandy Long, who lives close to Berkeley, says she and her husband, Chris, are “very spoiled” by their ability to take “quick 20-minute trips” to visit their daughter, Elisabeth, on campus. So when they learned that Liz had been accepted to UCDC, mom had concerns about her “flying off alone to D.C. to a place none of us had seen.”

All such parental worries quickly disappeared once Liz moved into the Center. “The facility is surrounded by embassies and nice hotels,” says Long. “The students live together in furnished apartments. Liz’s roommates have become good friends.” And her internship at the Environmental Law Institute “was life-changing: it really confirmed her interest in environmental law.”

UCDC participants Jessica Dell and Sparsha Saha interned at CNN’s Washington bureau.. (Joanne Connelly photo)

UCDC, thanks to its long-term relationships with Washington-area organizations (it’s been in the capital for 11 years, its director for nearly 30), provides leads and guidance to students as they search for internships, tracking their progress until each has secured a position.

Many look for placements in government. In spring 2007, Alan Donner interned at the White House, Akash Suri in the State Department, Erica Yung at Treasury, Bianca Yip with the Smithsonian Institution. Their classmate Jessica Dell, an ardent follower of electoral politics and an aspiring broadcast journalist, did a fast-paced tour of duty at CNN. Once she graduates, she plans to make a beeline for an entry-level job in television.

Kelly Nilsson’s volunteer position at Amnesty International led to a paid job, post-graduation, with the human-rights group. (Joanne Connelly photo)

There’s an excellent chance the “CNN” on her résumé will help pave the way — as UCDC internships have for many before her. After doing refugee casework at Amnesty International as a volunteer, Kelly Nilsson landed a paid staff position, post-graduation, with Amnesty’s mid-Atlantic regional office. For Ben Kramer ’04, interning at a DC think tank led to a staff position in the office of Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.).

Jenners Foe-Parker is now a first-year medical student at UC Irvine. She believes her UCDC experience (plus a personal recommendation from Goldstein) helped put her over the top in the intense competition for med school. Without a doubt it fostered a “baseline confidence” she now takes into every situation, she says. The UCDC experience “showed me you can do it” if you “go in with open eyes and an open heart and give it everything you’ve got.”

Fall ’07 innovations

Thanks to Jenners’ four-star review, her younger brother Colin, an engineering major, is heading to UCDC in September. He’ll find more robust extracurricular programming, new counseling services, and a newly expanded offering of electives. In recent semesters these courses have included, for example, “Population and Policy in the World of the 21st Century” (taught by the chair of Berkeley’s demography department) and “The Politics of Higher Education” (co-taught by historian and former Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl and political scientist Bruce Cain).

Christina Zaldana worked for a Latino community organization. (Joanne Connelly photo)

For a course titled “Inside the Beltway: Lawyers, Lobbyists, and Politicians,” Washington lawyer Lee Calligaro invited guest speakers who fill many of Washington’s ecological niches — Senate staffers, K Street lobbyists, political fundraisers, NGO directors. Because the center now regularly hosts many such speakers, he switched to offering a course on the judicial branch instead.

UCDC students gain “a much more sophisticated appreciation of government and how it works,” says Calligaro — one that serves them well in life, regardless of their major or their eventual profession.

Interest in UCDC grows, notes Goldstein, as the Washington political scene heats up. With the 2008 presidential campaign already in sway, he expects “lots of applicants for the coming year.”

For more information, see learning.berkeley.edu/ucdc or call 510/642-9102.