Interns Without Borders

Five Dickinson students interned with the State Department

October 7, 2008

Four of the five students met last spring with Ambassador Cynthia Efird, deputy commandant for international affairs at the U.S. Army War College. From left: Jacob Chase-Lubitz ’10, Josh Swarz ’08, Efird, Eli Brill ’10 and Sam Rosmarin ’09.

If you're willing to undergo a 90-day security vetting process, hop on a plane to a country of your government's choice and work 12-hour days, you may be a candidate for an internship with the U.S. Department of State. A record five Dickinsonians this summer were exposed to nearly everything such an opportunity has to offer.

"To put it in perspective, about 11,000 [college students throughout the country] apply, about 1,000 get these internships, and five from Dickinson got them," says Josh Swarz '08.

Walking the halls of power

"I made great contacts, attended high-profile meetings, took the Foreign Service Institute Language Test in French and really got a sense of how this area of the government functions," says Kathryn McNamara '11, who was assigned to the Sub-Saharan Africa Division of the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C.

Attending the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act forum allowed her to mingle with heads of state, foreign ministers and high-level diplomats. "I shook hands with the president of Comoros and got to hear Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speak," she recalls.

Eli Brill '10 felt welcome from his first day at the Washington, D.C.-based Office of Regional Affairs for the Bureau of South and Central Asia, which oversees 13 countries from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka. "From getting VIP tours of Congress, the Pentagon and the CIA, to having direct contact with action officers, foreign leaders and even the Secretary [of State], the only limiting factors were the time and energy to do them all," he says.

Brill considered the experience life-changing. "How many times during your college career can you say you personally had a hand in shaping U.S. foreign policy?"

International options

Josh Swarz '08 worked 12 to 14 hours a day with the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Paris, coordinating events at the U.S. ambassador's residence, gathering news clippings and writing speeches for the ambassador and public-affairs officers.

In his first week, he met President George W. Bush at a state dinner held by French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Swarz's role was to serve as an escort for Bush's translator, so the Secret Service gave him an all-access pass for the evening. "I'm not a big fan, but meeting President Bush was really cool," Swarz says. "He thanked me for working at the embassy."

Although he lived in a compound encircled by barbwire and traveled with armed police escorts, Sam Rosmarin '09 dismissed concerns about his safety with the Public Affairs Office at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria.

"That's not what scared me—it's not what I saw," he says, noting that Abuja is fairly isolated and "not considered all that dangerous."

In addition to monitoring and evaluating programs and grants, Rosmarin designed an interfaith seminar for Christians and Muslims and visited progressive Muslim schools to promote dialogue.

Back at Dickinson for his final semester, Rosmarin is eager to return to Africa. "I'm ready to find a job," he says. "I see this as a profession. It's not a fad. There are people who want to make this a career."

Dickinson connections

Working in the Near East/North Africa Division of Area Studies of the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C., Jacob Chase-Lubitz '10 helped prepare and administrate Middle Eastern culture and politics courses for foreign-service officers studying Arabic and an Iraq-intensive course for staff from several government agencies.

He spent his first few weeks "asking lots of questions about the procedure and substance of the organization" and recommends that students wishing to intern there "approach the position with the goal of proving how much you can learn, not how much you already know."

All five students credit the course American Foreign Policy Since 1945, taught by Doug Stuart, the J. William Stuart and Helen D. Stuart chair in international studies, business and management and professor of political science and international studies, as key to their understanding of not only foreign policy but the changing role of the State Department.

"We discussed the changing hierarchal relationship between different government agencies, especially between the military and the State Department," says McNamara. "This framework allowed me to make much more pertinent and analytical observations than I would have otherwise."

Rosmarin noted that Assistant Professor of Sociology Pauline Cullen's course, Global Inequality, provided additional cross-cultural context for him, explaining the complexities of growth, poverty reduction and the roles of international organizations.

Approximately half of the internships at the State Department are in Washington, D.C., with a few in offices elsewhere in the United States. Embassies and consulates abroad also offer internships.

Deadlines for applications to the State Department are Nov. 1 for the summer, March 1 for the fall and July 1 for the spring.