Hepburn Center Fellow-Sponsored Internships, Summer 2008

Eligibility: current Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors

Industry/Special Interest: Film/theater, women’s health, civic engagement

Description: The Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center will offer 12 summer internships in 2008 to undergraduates interested in obtaining practical experience in one of the Center’s three areas of mission: film/theater, women’s health, or civic engagement. Some internships will link students with current or past Hepburn Fellows, including Jane Eisner, Karen Stephenson, Susan Wood, Cynthia Eyakuze, and Judy Wicks. Information about these Hepburn Fellows and their areas of interest can be found below.

Undergraduates can also seek out and propose internships of their own devising that involve partnerships with other individuals and institutions committed to the areas of work that the Center encourages. Students selected to be Hepburn Center summer interns will be expected to participate in a Hepburn Internship Forum during the subsequent academic year. This will involve discussing their internship experiences, preparing a description of their internship experience for the Hepburn Center website, meeting with current Center Fellows, and consulting with students interested in applying for Hepburn internships for the subsequent year.

Award Amount: $3600

Length: 8 to 10 weeks

Materials Required:

• Two copies of a 2-3 page description of the internship, including a description of the organization, proposed work/research activities, and a personal statement addressing why the internship is important to you, professionally and personally
• A sponsorship letter from the agency/organization or a letter of agreement, giving evidence of placement—this must accompany the application
• Two copies of a resume
• A letter from a Bryn Mawr or Haverford College faculty member who is familiar with your abilities. This should be placed in a sealed envelope and signed across the back flap.

Specific Guidelines: Students can apply for an internship with one of the Hepburn Fellows (described below), can apply for an internship of their own devising, or can express an interest in either type of internship. For example, a student might apply for the internship with Judy Wicks and White Dog Community Partnerships, but also have explored a possible internship with a similar agency elsewhere which she would like to pursue should she not be selected for the Judy wicks slot.

All Hepburn Center applications will receive initial processing through the Bryn Mawr College Dean’s office, before being forwarded to the Hepburn Center for review.

Application Deadline: February 25, 2008

Contact: Professor Leslie Rescorla, Hepburn Center Director, lrescorl@ brynmawr.edu, x7318

About the Fellows:

Karen Stephenson is a cultural anthropologist who uses social network theory to study the functioning of organizations. First as a Hepburn Fellow and now as a Hepburn Research Associate, she has worked with Professor Victor Donnay and the Math Science Partnership of Greater Philadelphia (MSPGP). The MSPGP is a complex partnership of 46 school districts and 13 colleges and universities, funded by the National Science Foundation, which aims to improve secondary school math and science education.

The summer project with Dr. Stephenson will involve working with Professor Donnay and Dr. Stephenson at Bryn Mawr using the data base of the MSPGP to study the events the organization has put on over the past five years and making a network map to provide a visual representation of the MSPGP's work. The network map would then be analyzed to determine which events had the greatest impact on teachers and thereby provide guidance to future projects on how best to impact regional educational systems.

Susan Wood started her career as a lab-based neuroscientist, but shifted careers in 1990 when she took a position at the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues. Since that time, her work has focused on advocacy for women’s health issues, particularly reproductive rights. She resigned her position as Director of the Food and Drug Administration Office of Women’s Health in 2005 in protest against the FDA’s continued delay in approving Plan B, the emergency over-the-counter contraceptive. She currently is a Research Professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, where her work focuses on the use of scientific knowledge in public policy. Dr. Wood has offered to arrange for a summer internship at one of the four Washington, D.C.-based agencies described below devoted to women’s health:

• The National Women's Health Network was founded in 1975 to improve the health of all women by developing and promoting a critical analysis of health issues in order to affect policy and support consumer decision-making. The Network aspires to a health care system that is guided by social justice and reflects the needs of diverse women. http://www.nwhn.org/internships
• National Center for Research on Women and Families promotes the health and safety of women, children, and families, by using objective, research-based information to encourage new, more effective programs and policies. The Center achieves its mission by gathering and analyzing information and translating that information into clearly presented facts and policy implications that are made widely available to the public, the media, and policy makers. http://www.center4research.org/who1.html#jobs
• Women's Policy Inc (founded by former staff of Congressional Women's Caucus) champions the interests of women on social, economic, and health issues across the public policy spectrum. WPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose focus is to help ensure that the most informed decisions on key women's issues are made by policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels. Audiences include elected officials, regulators, women's groups, labor groups, academia, the business community, the media, and the general public. http://www.womenspolicy.org/interns/ Reproductive Health Technologies Project (RHTP), a non-profit advocacy organization in Washington, DC, works to advance the ability of every woman to achieve full reproductive freedom with access to the safest, most effective, and preferred methods for controlling her fertility and protecting her health. Founded on the belief that politics, more than science or economics, prevents new and improved products from entering the market as well as limits women’s knowledge of and access to technologies, RHTP works to ensure that new technologies are developed and introduced with appropriate safeguards, a well-informed consumer constituency, and broad-based public and policy support. http://www.rhtp.org/about/employment/default.asp#position3

Cynthia Eyakuze is the Director of the Public Health Watch Project Public Health Program of the Open Society Institute. Prior to joining the Open Society Institute, she was Acting Director of the Francophone Africa Program at Family Care International (FCI). For 2007-08, Dr. Eyakuze has arranged for a summer internship at FCI, which will provide an opportunity to work on international health issues under the close supervision of experienced professionals.

FCI, located in New York City, was established in 1987 with a strong commitment to improving maternal health in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. FCI creates tools and resources to strengthen services in more than 100 countries in order to ensure that women and adolescents have access to information to improve their health, experience safe pregnancy and childbirth, and avoid unwanted pregnancy and HIV infection. Additional priority areas include addressing unsafe abortion, gender-based violence, and unmet needs for family planning. Internship duties will include research and writing for correspondence, reports, and proposals related to global advocacy and the health Millennium Development Goals; work with national and international partners on selected projects; and administrative duties, as needed. Qualifications include research skills, strong written and verbal communication skills, language skills (Spanish or French desirable), and Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) proficiency.

Judy Wicks is owner of Philadelphia's 24-year-old White Dog Cafe, co-founder of the national Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), and founder of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia (SBN). She is also president of White Dog Community Enterprises, a non-profit dedicated to building a local living economy in the Philadelphia region. She has arranged a summer internship for 2007-08 at White Dog Community Enterprises (WDCE).

WDCE projects include Fair Food, which connects local family farms with urban markets, and the PIG Alliance, which supports pastured pig farming as an alternative to confinement pork production. The internship will involve working with WDCE staff at the Fair Food Farmstand at the Reading Terminal in Philadelphia as well as working on projects aimed at building a new economy based on local business ownership, fair business practices, the local food system, and love of nature.

Jane Eisner is Vice President for National Programs and Initiatives at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The National Constitution Center (NCC), located on Philadelphia's Independence Mall, is the first museum in the world dedicated to honoring and explaining the U.S. Constitution. The NCC also houses the Annenberg Center for Education and Outreach, which serves as a hub for national constitutional education and teacher resources, and hosts more than 50 programs a year in its role as America’s “town hall” for deliberation and debate of constitutional issues.

The 2007-08 Hepburn summer intern at the NCC will assist on timely and wide-ranging research for various programs and events. The intern will help to organize the department’s national initiatives and will work with both the Director of National Programs and the Director of National Initiatives. A particular focus on 2008 will to help with planning a conference for 2010 on women's leadership, marking the 90th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment. Thus, an intern with an interest in U.S. women's history is particularly desirable. The work will include writing proposals, treatments, and memos; research for media projects; attending meetings involving national programming and initiatives; coordinating with guests and audience at speaking events; and writing invitations to prominent Americans to speak at the Center. Qualifications include excellent research and writing ability, and good computer and organizational skills. Computer graphics experience is also a plus. A possibility exists for starting the Internship part-time in March and then continuing into the summer.