July 2008

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University students are turning the causes closest to their hearts into summer internships.

Several students are working across the nation and overseas at internships for not-for-profit groups. According to Laurie Diekhoff, assistant director for the Hart Career Center, more students are choosing internships outside the traditional corporate world. “I believe this generation of students is very socially aware,” Diekhoff said. “They come to campus with a history of volunteer and community service experience, so it’s natural that they want to continue to be involved in meaningful service work.”

From helping in the fight against breast cancer to making the arts affordable, students are tackling internships that satisfy their desire to make a difference or give back to the community.

For the Cure

When Illinois Wesleyan University senior Lauren Gearhart sought out a summer internship with the St. Louis affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, she knew volunteering would mean supporting breast cancer activists and survivors like her sister, who was diagnosed this past November. “I always had an interest in the foundation,” said Gearhart, a business administration and sociology double major. “But I never took action to discover more about it until the cause hit home.”

Working under the director of marketing and public relations for the foundation, Gearhart began her internship in the middle of preparation for the 25th annual Komen Race for the Cure, which took place on June 21. Considered to be the largest series of 5K runs and fitness walks in the world, it is the Foundation’s most lucrative fundraiser; over a billion dollars has been collected for cancer research to date.

Gearhart recalls both the chaos of her first two weeks, describing the office phones as ringing off the hook in preparation, and the satisfaction of the day of the race itself. “Preparing for it was more challenging than I thought it would be, but well worth it when you see over 64 thousand people supporting your cause,” she said.

For the Pride

Junior Erin Strauts, an executive board member of IWU’s Pride Alliance, has taken her cause all the way to Washington, D.C. The political science major is living and working in the nation’s capital while she interns for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

The HRC is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) equality. As part of her internship, Strauts is writing a research paper exploring the correlation between visibility of same-sex couples in society and public opinion of relationship recognition for same-sex couples.

A research intern, Strauts is responsible for pulling together polling information, statistics and research on GLBT issues into one central document. “One of the careers I’m interested in is working in survey research and having not-for-profit clients,” said Strauts. “At HRC, I’ve gotten the experience of helping design a national survey, and I’ve made connections through this internship that will definitely help me in the future.”

For the People

Lauren Nelson, who is majoring in international studies, spent the second semester of her junior year abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia before traveling to Prague, where she attends classes at Charles University and interns at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) with the Russian language service.

RFE/RL’s mission is to provide uncensored news and information to countries where a free press is either banned by the government or not fully established. Broadcasting to 30 million listeners in 28 languages in 21 countries, the station reaches Eastern and southeastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, the Middle East and Central and Southwest Asia. Compiling news from diverse sources across the world, Nelson’s reviews are translated into Russian and broadcasted on “Time of Liberty,” a daily program.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill.—It has been called poetry of the uneducated, the peasant class or the laboring class. Yet these terms demean what a group of poets from the 1700s produced, said Julie Prandi, a professor at Illinois Wesleyan University. “Their work has meaning and life that we can see even today, but it has often been dismissed as lower class or second rate,” she said.

In Prandi’s latest book, The Poetry of the Self-Taught: An Eighteenth-Century Phenomenon (Peter Lang Publishing, May 2008), she adopts the term “self-taught poets” for those who did not have formal educations through universities. The book is one of the first real attempts to compare the works of self-taught poets in Germany and the United Kingdom during the eighteenth century. “Many people have studied these poets individually, and found what they thought were idiosyncrasies, or just charming elements of their writing,” said Prandi, “when in fact they were characteristics these poets shared with other self-taught poets.”

Prandi, a professor of German who has written a book and several articles on the poet Goethe, discovered the self-taught poet Anna Louise Karsch in the 1990s when working with Women in German, a scholarly organization devoted to research on female, German authors. “I found her work exciting, and I had never seen it in any anthology,” said Prandi. “I thought, ‘this has to be a mistake that she was left out.’” Through her research, Prandi uncovered that few self-taught poets were included in anthologies or textbooks. “Many of them enjoyed fame in their lifetimes, but scholars dismissed them because their work did not follow the standards of what was being taught at universities at the time,” said Prandi.

Because of this bias, much of the work of the self-taught poets vanished as centuries passed. “We assume that poetry disappears from literary history because it was bad, and did not stand the test of time,”’ said Prandi. “But sometimes scholars make mistakes.”

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill.— With the 2008 presidential election only a few months away, the world of politics is earning an even brighter spotlight than usual. This summer, some Illinois Wesleyan University students are a close look at that spotlight through political internships.

An internship for Illinois State Sen. Bill Brady [R-44th District] is offering IWU senior Dan George insights. George, a music major from Schaumburg, Ill., said he is learning that government has less to do with political wrangling, and more to do with understanding the needs of people. “As an intern for Senator Brady, I am usually the first contact for his constituents,” said George. “If a resident of the district calls the office to comment on the quality of the roads, I will see that the message gets to the Senator. If someone stops into the office to advocate for the elderly, I will talk with the person to make sure his or her needs are met.”

Brady, who is a 1983 Illinois Wesleyan graduate, said he has found interns vital for research as well as providing another means of support for constituents. “Our interns assist constituents on a day-to-day basis with issues and solving their needs,” said Brady, who has utilized the research of interns on projects such as enhancing retired teacher pensions and promoting higher education projects.

This summer, Illinois Wesleyan junior Monica Shah is seeing not only how political offices run, but campaigns as well. Shah began the summer as an intern for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s [D-Illinois] Chicago office, working with day-to-day operations. Now she is an intern with his presidential campaign. “The word ‘excitement’ does not quite cover it,” said Shah, who is from Downers Grove, Ill. “It’s amazing to speak with so many people who call in to voice their opinion on different decisions or acts, and to know that people are not apathetic, and really are concerned with issues.”

An internship in politics is the first step toward a career in government after graduation, as Illinois Wesleyan alumnus Clint W. Sabin can attest.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Stacey Shimizu, who has served as interim director of the International Office at Illinois Wesleyan since the fall of 2006, has been named the office’s director.

IWU Provost and Dean of the Faculty Beth Cunningham announced Shimizu’s appointment, which will be effective immediately.

“Stacey has considerable experience in international study abroad, including serving as assistant to the director of the London Program during the fall of 2003,” said Cunningham. “As acting director, Stacey has completed a review of the IWU London Program, helped administer the implementation of our home-school tuition policy, expanded a program for faculty to receive supplemental funding to review study abroad locations during their international travel, and, as part of the International student Admissions Committee, worked to bring a record 36 new international students to IWU this fall.”

In 1996, Shimizu graduated magna cum laude from Boston University with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. In 1991, she earned a master’s degree in comparative literature from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, where she also received an A.B.D. in the same field of study in 1993. Shimizu has taught in the departments of English at Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, Penn., Gettysburg College and Dickinson College, Penn.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The small, South American country of Ecuador made the news last week as the government seized nearly 200 businesses to collect debts from a bank collapse. This move has given rise to fears of a dictatorship surfacing in the democratic republic that has substantial petroleum resources and draws in millions of dollars in foreign investment. However, the news did not shock Illinois Wesleyan University student Rachel Hodel, who spent this past spring studying abroad in the coastal village of Olon, Ecuador.

“It does not surprise me at all,” said Hodel. She believes many of the nation’s problems stem from a high percentage of people there who live in poverty. “In a country that deals with poverty everyday, everyone is struggling and people talk of corruption everywhere,” she said.

For nearly 30 years, Ecuador has been ruled by a civil government that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Factbook said is “marred by political instability.” The economy has suffered as well, with a bank crisis in 1999 that led to the adoption of the U.S. dollar as currency in 2000. Although the move helped stabilize the economy and attract more foreign investors, there was also a downside, according to Kim Priebe. A 2003 Illinois Wesleyan graduate, Priebe taught English classes in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, from 2005 to 2006 as an instructor for World Teach, an organization out of the Harvard Center for National Development.

Once a retreat for Incan royalty, Vilcabamba is a village in the southern region of Ecuador, located in a scenic area known as the Valley of Longevity because of the wide belief that its residents commonly reach 100 years old and beyond. When a New York Times article on Vilcabamba referred to the village as “a jewel,” “suddenly English-speaking investors were pouring into the place,” said Priebe, along with a wave of international settlers who were older and wealthy.

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