UC student enjoying life in Washington
Merced Sun-Star
Merced, CA
by Michael Doyle
WASHINGTON -- UC Merced senior Justin Duckham admits he is a straight-up political junkie.
Now he gets his fix daily, as a pioneering participant in UC Merced's Washington semester. He is interning as a journalist, taking classes and living with several hundred other students in a multipurpose University of California facility on Embassy Row.
"It's halfway between living in a dormitory and living in a lecture hall," Duckham said. "On the first day, they told us not to come down the stairs in our pajamas, in case there's someone important around."
The 21-year-old history major is one of six UC Merced students participating in the university's D.C. program. Though the eight other UC undergraduate campuses have been sending students to Washington for years, this is only the second semester in which the UC system's youngest campus has participated.
This semester, some 200 University of California students are enrolled in the D.C. program. They share classroom and dorm space with students from the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania, all under the same roof as the University of California's professional lobbying team.
The academic programs differ slightly, but follow similar tracks. Although the UC Merced students take a mandatory research seminar and can opt for additional electives, the core of the program is a 30-hour-a-week internship.
"Classrooms are wonderful places to learn," said Marc Sandalow, a journalist and on-site director of the UC Merced D.C. program, "but there's something special about walking through a metal detector at the State Department, or on Capitol Hill."
Duckham, for instance, is covering events for the Talk Radio News Service. He runs around town with a tape recorder, scooping up news and sound bites for distribution to talk show hosts. He covered the Senate debate over a $700 billion economic bailout bill, and listened to Ben Bernanke testify.
Back in Merced, Duckham will remember: meeting Jesse Jackson, getting caught making funny faces behind a prominent senator, drinking scotch and talking politics with noted raconteur Christopher Hitchens. Once, he came within centimeters of bumping into hard-charging congressman Rahm Emanuel -- and, as he said, "living to tell about it."
The diversity of other UC Merced internships reflects the capital's mix of public and private interests.
Sam Kim is at the State Department. Zain Memon is at the Raben Group lobbying firm. Rodney Nickens is at the Black Congressional Caucus Foundation. Los Angeles native Alizul Rosado is at Bread for the World, where the senior political science major is researching foreign aid and child nutrition. Maggie Stockel, a junior from Tracy, is working in the archives of the Freer and Sackler galleries, part of the larger Smithsonian Institution.
"I have always and forever been in love with the Smithsonian Institution, so I saw (this) program as the perfect opportunity to intern there," Stockel said. "Plus, I love Washington, D.C. -- except for the weather."
In the archives, Stockel is helping preserve the papers of a prominent German archeologist and Middle East expert who died 60 years ago. She is at the archives four days a week; on Friday, she joins her fellow students for seminars. At night, there are guest speakers.
All of the students are receiving what amounts to a semester's worth of credit -- essentially at a semester's price -- for their time in Washington.
Each individual campus chooses its own participating students and determines its own basic rules. UCLA, for instance, limits internships to 24 hours a week, while UC Santa Barbara permits students to spend as much as 35 hours a week interning.
The hours add up, and the combination of work, Beltway buzz and classroom obligations demand endurance. Nearly 9 percent of participating students last year took advantage of the D.C. center's mental health counseling, the center's annual report noted; this was about four times the national on-campus college average.
"They're sophisticated kids; that said, it's been an eye-opening experience for them," Sandalow said. "It's an adjustment for them to be in the working world."
More will probably arrive in the future. On the UC Merced campus, history professor Gregg Herken -- himself a former curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum -- oversees the selection of students hoping to give Washington a try.
"In a way, it's really like a California embassy," Duckham said of the university's Rhode Island Avenue quarters. "You go through the doors, and leave behind the suit-and-tie world of D.C."
And then you go through the doors again, and find yourself back in the nation's capital.
