Berkeley faculty aren’t the only ones on campus with work experience in the nation’s capital. The UC Berkeley Washington Program (UCDC) offers undergraduate students a chance to work inside the Washington Beltway — interning in government, nonprofit, and corporate organizations — and attend for-credit classes taught by Berkeley faculty.
Past participants have worked at the State Department, the Department of Treasury, the Smithsonian Institution, and CNN, among others. Last semester, some also traveled — to Paraguay to study health surveillance systems, to New Hampshire to assist in television coverage of the presidential primary there, to Indonesia for the U.N. Conference on Global Warming, and to New Jersey to work with a Department of Justice team studying discrimination in prisons.
“For most of these students, this is the most difficult thing they have ever done in their undergrad career,” says political science professor Michael Goldstein, who heads the program and teaches its research seminar.
Participation in the program can lead to employment after graduation. One recent participant, Kelly Nilsson ’06, worked her way to a full-time job through a rewarding UCDC internship at Amnesty International, where she assisted foreign nationals with appeals for amnesty status. “I would review their claims and perform detailed research into the conditions in their home countries,” she recalls. After graduation, she landed a paid staff position at Amnesty.
Thanks to Berkeley’s reputation and UCDC’s local relationships, the program has leads on a wealth of outstanding internships. Students compete for admission to the program — and as the political scene heats up, so does interest in being in D.C.
