In the spirit of ASU’s innovation, students interested in professional programs outside of internships have begun investing their efforts in fellowship programs across the nation.
Fellowships can take students all over the world from the United Kingdom to Italy — even Thailand.
Kyle Mox, the associate dean of National Scholarship Advisement, said the Office of National Scholarship Advancement is trying to reach out to underrepresented groups and graduate students to expand to new groups.
“One of the efforts that we’re trying to do in my office is to focus in on what we call special populations,” Mox said. “Students that demonstrate high financial need for instance or students that come from groups that are historically underrepresented in certain career fields.”
One such fellowship is the Public Policy and International Affairs fellowship. This program is an intensive seven-week program that allows a group of students to take graduate-level courses at Princeton and UC Berkeley.
“The PPIA program is intended to draw students that are typically underrepresented in international affairs and public service,” Mox said. “We thought that was a really good match for our students.
He said a fellowship is a better way to spend a summer than an internship.
“Internships are essential and they’re very important, but many, many, many students have internships,” Mox said. “There are a very small number of students who get these (fellowships), and that puts the student in a pretty elite circle.”
ASU has consistently ranked high for the amount of Fulbright scholars it has produced. This puts the University in the same league as schools like Northwestern, Yale and Harvard.
Mox said ASU allows students who wish to go down that path to get a quality education while attending an accessible school.
“Students can get the highest quality possible education that makes them competitive for these types of awards the same as you would at a small liberal arts school or a research institution,” he said.
Journalism and finance junior Jamee Lind is one of the PPIA winners this year. She specifically went through the ONSA office and said she became interested in statewide affairs when she worked at The Arizona Republic.
“As a reporter, I felt limited in how much I could help,” Lind said. “I was in a really rough area of Phoenix, and a girl had been shot in the head in a drive. I was talking to the mom, and she was so upset because (no) stories were being reported in that area of Phoenix.”
She said she’s always been involved in community service, and that she wants to be more involved.
“We have this huge campus and there’s so many kids on it and we’re all so unaware of how the community around us is going down and so many people are just using the Tempe area for four years and wrecking it,” Lind said.
Brian Goehner, who works at ASU's Office of National Scholarship Advisement, helped Jamee Lind prepare for her application.
He said the ONSA office advises on many different scholarships and fellowships and does workshops and outreach on all of the campuses. Students can then schedule a meeting with him if they so choose.
“When we meet with a student, often if they're qualified for one, they may also be qualified or interested in two or three other ones, which is what happened in Jamee’s case,” Goehner said.
He then helps students go through the process of applying and recommends that they start preparing three to five months ahead of the deadline.
Goehner said what he loves about PPIA is that his office has only recently started advising about it and that it actually fits with his own academic background and interests.
“Also, the fact that our office had not worked with it and now we’re bringing it back to help students be more competitive got me very excited,” he said.
Through the program, Lind said she hopes to understand how a community can help and what people do to create policies.
“I want to know the ins and outs of policy more, how everything ties together and how policy decisions are made — the logistics of everything,” Lind said.
Editor's Note: A previous version of this story misquoted Jamee Lind. It has been updated with the correct information.
Related links:
ASU freshman awarded religion and conflict research fellowship
ASU South Sudan fellowship program incubates methods to enhance international education
Reach the reporter at avcabral@asu.edu or follow @angeligagaa on Twitter.
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