Washington, DC Internship Experience
This program provides students from all disciplines the opportunity to build on their knowledge and understanding of politics and its relationship to their own field of study by immersing them in the life and culture of Washington, DC, and the real world of politics through an internship in the nation’s capital. Students will participate in an internship 30-35 hours per week, explore Washington culture independently on evenings and weekends, and participate in a service learning project. They will attend seminars, lectures by political practitioners and elites (examples from past trips include the White House Chief of staff, an academic expert on campaign finance reform, and the ambassador from Pakistan), and site visits (examples include tours of the Pentagon, tours of embassies, and a trip to the Newseum) arranged by the Washington Center* on Fridays. Under the guidance of the Furman professor, Washington Center program advisor, and internship supervisor, students will establish professional, academic, and personal goals for their time in DC and will document the accomplishment of these goals in a portfolio during the semester. These experiences will constitute one of the three courses they take in Washington.
To help students connect their internships and experiences to relevant academic perspectives, students will take a course on Fieldwork in Politics taught in the evening by the Furman professor. In this course, students will read scholarly literature relevant to the area they are working in and reflect on its connection to their work experience and observations in an internship journal. In addition, students will meet weekly in small groups with the professor to discuss and compare their experiences and to consider what their combined experiences teach them about politics and government, thus encouraging them to use participant observation as a method to study the political world. Short written assignments for this class will also require students to practice other methods of inquiry social scientists use to study government and politics in the field—content analysis and elite interviews, for example.
All students on the program will work in an internship that best suits their interests in Washington, D.C. Past placements include the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, interest groups, U.S. Congressional Offices, news organizations, federal departments and agencies such as the US Environmental Protection Agency, The White House, and think tanks. Some of these require early applications.