Hands on Learning: The Baker Institute’s Summer in D.C. Internship Program

By Mitch Kaplan • Photography by Jeff Fitlow

Walk into the Chinese teahouse ching ching CHA in Washington, D.C.’s, Georgetown neighborhood on certain summer Saturday afternoons, and you’ll see them. Eight young women and men—plus one engaging middle-aged man—seated on large floor cushions around a low-set table, surrounded by piles of books and papers. They’ll be sipping tea and conversing with quiet, earnest intensity.

Georgetown being home to several universities, logic says this must be a university class of some sort. And indeed, those gathered around the table are collegians, but they’re not from a local school. This is a select group of Rice University students participating in the Jesse Jones Leadership Center Summer in D.C. Policy Research Program sponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

The Baker Institute’s staff created the Summer in D.C. program in 2004 to offer students a unique opportunity that blends the institute’s on-campus capabilities with the kind of hands-on experience only the nation’s capital can offer. “We’re trying to take advantage of the fact that we have excellent undergrads at Rice who are increasingly interested in public policy and also take advantage of the fact that, at the Baker Institute, we have research projects with good visibility and connections to Washington in particular,” explains program coordinator Steven Lewis. “The institute is trying to help train the next generation of policy researchers, so we thought we’d take advantage of those resources and support Rice undergrads to go to D.C. during the summer.”

Many universities maintain internship programs, especially in Washington, D.C., but two elements set the Baker Institute’s approach apart. One is the major financial support the program receives from Houston Endowment Inc., plus additional support from Anne Armstrong, the Eason-Weinmann Foundation, Kenneth Franzheim, Roy Huffington, Edward Ney, Peter Secchia, the Salgo Trust for Education, and C. Howard Wilkins. This funding enables the institute to provide students with a generous summer living stipend. “This program is unique in that it’s student oriented,” Lewis says. “It’s up to them to get the internship, but we provide the support.”

That support allows the students to concentrate on their work, which ties in to the program’s second differentiating factor: its academic emphasis. Students read required texts and participate in three seminars during their stay in D.C. At the end of the program, they write a follow-up report and give a presentation before faculty and institute researchers. On completion of their reports, they receive a final honorarium. “It’s all directed at helping them toward a future career in policy and analysis,” Lewis says.

The Acceptance Process

While the Baker Institute shares its campus building with the School of Social Science, the institute itself doesn’t offer classes. That means it must work continuously to raise awareness of the program.

“We put out the word in a host of ways,” says Lewis. “We have been using email blasts, advertisements in the Thresher, and information sessions with the help of past participants.”

The program supports eight students. This past year, approximately 20 went through the application process, during which candidates propose what they want to do with their internship and explain why they’re seeking a stipend. A committee of researchers reviews the proposals, ranks them, and chooses the top submissions, plus alternates.

While the Baker Institute provides the stipend for living and working in D.C., it’s up to the students to find their own internships—a search that can require resourcefulness. As might be expected of this generation’s students, the Internet often functions as a primary search tool. “I was looking on Idealist.org,” says Laura Szarmach ’07, who interned at the Advocacy Project, a human rights organization. “It constantly updates job listings from a wide range of nonprofits and civil–social groups.” Chris Aresu ’08, who worked at the Coalition for American Leadership Abroad, found his spot through a Google search.

Others find jobs through personal connections and references. Senior Saira Karim ’07, for example, found hers at the Middle East Institute after the Baker Institute’s Energy Forum director, Amy Myers Jaffe, recommended she apply. Many, like Kathryn Wheat ’07, combine those resources. Wheat sought advice from Kirstin Matthews, a Baker Institute science and technology research assistant with whom she had studied. She asked other Rice students as well. “They gave me suggestions, and one was the Department of State, which has an online application,” she says. “I found my position there by doing a web search.”

Being an intern, of course, often can involve less-than-glamorous daily responsibilities—gofer tasks, making coffee, hours by the copy machine, and daily trips to the post office—but not the Summer in D.C. interns, who assume an impressive degree of responsibility. “My work involves compiling data, reports, and the latest news on AIDS in Africa and keeping statistics on what’s in the news and in Congress,” says Christina Lagos ’08, who interned at Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa (DATA), a nonprofit organization that aims to raise awareness of, and spark responses to, African crises. “The Global Health Council had a conference on HIV and AIDS incidence, looking to see if they’re declining,” Lagos says. “I kept notes and reported to the organization. The week before, I went to the National Institutes of Medicine for a meeting on public health and how physicians are being trained to meet community health needs locally and abroad.”

Lagos’s responsibilities also included tracking media coverage—“figuring out which newspapers and reporters are writing about the developing world and the health crisis, what drives them to write about it, and what’s compelling and attracts the public,” she explains. “I tried to help develop the organization’s relationship with the media.”

Impressive too has been the students’ ability to gain positions in organizations that are devoted to their interests. Sarah Perelstein ’07 worked at the Humane Society’s Gaithersburg, Maryland, office. “Ultimately I want to become a lawyer,” she says. “I’m interested in environmental law and animal rights. This is the closest thing I’ve done to match my interest.”

Szarmach’s work at the Advocacy Project tied into her concern about “a variety of issues in the developing world and advocacy projects for human rights,” she says. Wheat’s assignment at the Department of State’s Bureau of Science and Technology brought her into daily contact with George Atkinson, the bureau’s advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “I saw him daily,” she says. “He usually checked in with me and the other interns once or twice a week to make sure we were doing the research we wanted to do and were involved in the office. He was really accessible.”

It’s this kind of access—to people, organizations, and events in the capital—that affords the Summer in D.C. interns the greatest benefit. “A lot of people I worked with were really out to help the interns make connections or, in general, give us proceedings from reports and other reading material to enrich us,” Wheat says. “I got to make phone calls to the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about upcoming projects and go to meetings on my own.”

For Vivek Gopalan ’07, who interned at the Center for American Progress, access to events proved special. “The center puts on a lot of forums with leading policy experts in the field. There’s one almost every other day,” he says. “You learn almost all the things that are going on in the world—you get a tie to things that are happening today but also the broader implications. There was one about Africa, another on economic policy with New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. On my first day, there was one on the federal marriage amendment with all kinds of constitutional scholars.”

Globalization Over Chinese Tea

Getting their work done and interacting with policymakers are only parts of these students’ responsibilities. They arrive in Washington “lugging a suitcase full of books,” as Lewis puts it. Interns make their way through two centuries of thinking about globalization—from classic political economy texts of the 19th and 20th centuries to modern social theory on global affairs of the past two decades.

“The globalization of policymaking has been the main theme,” explains Lewis. “We try to cover both the historical background of how societies respond to globalization—the classic Western texts on social theory—and a wide range of policy issue areas, including key theoretical and methodological debates.”

Reading and analyzing these texts constitutes a major portion of the interns’ workload and serves as a launching pad for open discussions on a wide range of topics—from foreign policy to science and technology policy and from trade policy to cultural and legal reform policy. “The goal is to show them they are not the first generation of policy researchers to try to tackle the challenges posed by globalization,” Lewis says. “We discuss how the classic explanations and methods inform current policy theorists and show them that, in the current policy debates, there are a wide range of disciplinary approaches and innovative methods that can be applied.”

It’s for these sessions that the interns gather at ching ching CHA, where each student gets a chance to lead the week’s book discussion. Despite—or perhaps because of—the heavy reading load, the students universally appreciate what they’re learning and experiencing. “It’s a wonderful opportunity,” comments Karim. “It’s very enlightening. You hear a lot of people’s ideas, but you present on your own. You’re responsible for leading the discussion, so you get to hone those skills, think outside the box, and apply those ideas to the current time. I was able to increase my knowledge on how the economy and globalization relate in the larger picture.”

“It was definitely alarming at first to see the stack of books,” Lagos says. “But after looking at the titles, it was really exciting because lots of the reading was so pertinent and relevant to what I was doing in my work. It’s an inspiration to read and see the academic basis, to see what was going on in my organization and in D.C. The seminars were great—I couldn’t have asked for a more intellectual and real-life experience at the same time.”

After these all-afternoon discussions over tea, the group repaired to a good Georgetown restaurant to continue talking and to socialize over dinner. The students were joined for one mid-July meal by Adele Morris ’85, an economist with the Department of the Treasury. Morris gladly answered questions covering topics ranging from her own career biography to what it’s like to attend White House meetings. The students paid particular attention when she contrasted the working environments during the Clinton and current Bush administrations.

Whenever possible, Lewis connects the students to Rice alumni living in the D.C. area. The interns prize his effort and also gain added value from it. Indeed, by dinner’s end, Morris had offered to introduce at least two students to people working in government agencies.

Professional stimulation in D.C. is all around, and these students were quick to take advantage. As Aresu points out, “One of the great things about being there is that some things you learn might not be directly related to work—seminars, speakers, things you can get into without charge that can open your mind to different possibilities of work and study.” Aresu cites a summer lecture series on Oman and U.S. policy staged by the National Council on U.S.–Arab Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “They have speakers for two hours, two times a week,” he says. “It’s like a free seminar class for the entire summer. I learned a lot about the country of Oman and U.S.–Middle East relations in general.”

Sometimes the opportunities reach beyond Washington. “There is an International AIDS Conference in Toronto in August, the largest gathering of scientists, policy experts, national representatives, and people living with AIDS,” Lagos says. “My internship director asked me to come up with a proposal outlining the conference and why DATA should attend, which track is best, and who from DATA should go and why. He noticed my interest in HIV/AIDS and health policy, so he told me to include a compelling argument on why I should attend the conference as well.”

In It for the Long Run

Clearly the students’ Washington experience holds great benefit, but the Jones program has loftier, long-term goals for these budding scholars. “We believe it’s helpful to have our internships take place in the sophomore or junior year,” Lewis explains. “Then they can use their experience as a guide to future research and to apply for something prestigious like Fulbright, Truman, Rhodes, Boren, Wagoner, and other advanced-study scholarships.”

The 2006 interns understand the long-term advantages of the program. “Working with the State Department and reading the books Dr. Lewis assigned made me a lot more aware of things that are going on,” says Wheat, a philosophy/premed major. “I want to go into pediatrics or family practice. I’m learning about politics and government because there’s going to be a lot of changes in politics nationally and in Texas—like Social Security—and it’s good to know where people are coming from. I’m also considering getting a master’s in public health. Then I could be a practicing physician, but it would allow me to participate in task forces or boards or work with universities in research about public health issues.”

Kirti Datla ’07 presents another illustration. Interning at the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs in the Office of Oceans Affairs, she was able to have lunch with a woman who was working on a treaty Datla was interested in. “Certainly, understanding how the State Department works is beneficial, simply because there are a lot of misconceptions about the bureaucracy,” Datla says. “It’s a fantastic place to work and to establish a career. I have been considering working in government for a long time. To be at the State Department and to meet people from different areas of U.S. government gives me a better idea about where I want to be in the future.”

Past summer interns like Norain Khan and Jason Lee, who both graduated in 2006, are evidence of the program’s success helping students reach postgraduation goals. Khan, a 2004 intern at the Middle East Institute, is pursuing a master’s degree at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, doing comparative research on veiling among women in the Muslim diaspora of the United States and the United Kingdom. “Having the opportunity to participate in this program had a strong influence on the options I had after graduation,” she says. “I made a lot of personal connections and started to think about my work more seriously. Dr. Lewis was a big help in working on the scholarship. He helped me make connections with scholars in England.”

Lee spent summer 2005 interning at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Now he’s a Fulbright scholar studying in China. The internship, he says, “gave me focus on the topics and the aspects of U.S.–China relations that I’m interested in. I got exposure to experts in the field and the opportunity to meet other students and researchers working on the same things I was. It was a hands-on experience you don’t get in the classroom. I brought what I learned from that experience to the proposal I drew up for my Fulbright application. It helped me make an educated decision whether this is really something I want to do.”

The Baker Institute’s Summer in D.C. program is flourishing, and for that—in keeping with his personality—Lewis credits the people around him. “It helps that we have enthusiastic support from the Baker Institute leadership, including Ambassador Edward Djerejian, our director; Maggie Cryer, our former administrator; Allen Matusow, associate director for academic programs; and staffers Jason Lyons and Lisa McCaffety,” he says. “The last two, in particular, have done the nuts-and-bolts work to get the stipends to the students and so forth. It has been a team effort. And of course, the researchers also have been supportive. They help us select the participants, and they also help provide feedback on their research reports at a presentation session early in the fall semester. It’s stressful for the participants, of course, but they learn much from it.”

“The Baker Institute was really helpful,” says Lee. “When you’re in class, reading and writing, you have no idea of what the real world applications are. The program really helped me get an idea of what I want to do.”

Perhaps Gopalan summarizes the interns’ feeling best when he says, “I think it’s one of the most amazing programs. The stipend gives you the opportunity to really concentrate on the internship and do public service. The seminars are personally enriching—you’d never read this many books for your leisure. It’s amazing that Rice has this program and gives students this much opportunity.”