Category Archives: Summer Internships

08.04.08: Summer Business

So far you’ve learned how the Monterey Institute’s GSIPS and GSLEL students spend their summertime. Now here’s a taste of how FGSIB students remain focused on business as usual despite the summer holidays.    

Clayton Snyder has an internship as a Senior Resource Specialist at Technicolor Home Entertainment Services, Inc. Clayton’s responsibilities include analyzing Technicolor’s worldwide energy and water consumption over the last three years; reporting worldwide CO2 emissions over the same time period; publishing bi-weekly reports for upper management on pertinent sustainability issues; and researching LEED certification potential for existing company facilities.

Naomi Arnold has an internship as a Category Management MBA Fellow at TransFair USA in Oakland, California, working in its Fair Trade Certified program. This project intends to diagnose the environmental impact story of Fair Trade, for which the label is lesser known, but equally stringent in initial producer qualifications and continuous improvements. Naomi’s responsibilities include researching environmental impact studies on Fair Trade, the impacts of organic farming, shade-grown coffee and carbon retention on Fair Trade Certified product farms as well as the environmental impacts of conventional crop production of coffee, flowers, sugar and bananas. The project’s goal is to create a gap analysis between Fair Trade and other labeling certifications, conduct an assessment of where improvements can be made to the environmental story, and create materials that communicate this effectively.

Check back in coming weeks for summer stories from MIIS students!!!

07.28.08: Fine-Tuning the Art of Teaching

Like most Monterey Institute students this summer, those from the
Graduate School of Language and Education Linguistics are out and
about exploring internship and other professional opportunities! To
learn about their experiences – where they are and how they’re
impacting the field of language teaching – read below!

Further enriching the Monterey Institute community, Claire Schadler
(MATESOL/LPA)
is Program Coordinator this year for the 6-week Summer
Intensive English Preparation for Translation & Interpretation (EPTI)
program which provides advanced language enhancement courses in
English translation and interpretation for language professionals and
students who have been admitted to the Graduate School of Translation
& Interpretation (GSTI). Jeremy Robinson (MATFL-Spanish) is teaching
two sections of a free, two-week, “mini-course” that he developed
earlier this year in which students with Beginning through
Native-Speaker proficiency levels learn reading, writing, speaking,
and listening skills in Spanish along with important skills in digital
video creation, storytelling, and micropublishing on the internet.

Venturing outside of the cradle of the Monterey Bay area this summer,
Meg MacDonald (MATFL-Chinese) is working as a Residential Advisor in
the Chinese section at the Monterey-Middlebury Language Academy, a
four-week language immersion summer camp for middle and high school
students near Burlington, Vermont. Jarred Brinkman (MATESOL) is
teaching various audiences through collaboration with Middlebury
College’s study abroad center in Chile as an intern at the Instituto
Chileno Norteamericano, the bi-national center in Santiago, Chile.
Half a world away in Hanoi, Vietnam, Natalie Cole (MATESOL) is the
first participant in a trial internship at Oxford English-UK, a
private educational institution in that provides English training to
primarily college students and young professionals. Over a period of 3
to 4 months, she will teach about 25 hours per week of
English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) to Vietnamese learners in Hanoi.

Two MATESOL/LPA candidates are assisting with the Comunidad Autónoma
de Madrid (CAM) teacher-training program being conducted in Madrid,
Spain; Monterey, California; and Burlington, Vermont this summer. In
Madrid, Greer Murphy is working with a group of in-service language
instructors as they enrich their knowledge of language, culture, and
bilingual education while Sylvia Popichak is working in Burlington
with additional educators from Spain’s bilingual programs as they
participate in academically-relevant cultural and social activities.

07.21.08 Mongolian Riots, a MIIS Perspective

Ever wonder how Monterey Institute students spend the dog days of summer??? Some by studying their languages at Middlebury College, others by interning in Monterey or Washington D.C. or Istanbul or Berlin…even Mongolia! Earlier this month, GSIPS student Molly Ammons was caught amidst the “state of emergency” declared in Mongolia. Like other MIIS students before Molly, her internship – which focuses on implementing Mongolia’s Millennium Development Goals – took her to the front lines of a political crisis. While busily completing this internship, Molly’s also conducting research on North Korean refugees and migration within Mongolia.         

Keep reading for Molly’s firsthand perspective of the Mongolian political riots:

Last night at midnight I answered a frantic call from my Mongolian co-worker. “Absolutely do not leave your apartment. Don’t come to work tomorrow morning. Don’t leave your house at all until I call to say it’s okay. Call your friends to let them know that it’s not safe for anyone to be on the streets.”

Early yesterday evening, as I blissfully hiked in the sun-soaked hills outside of Ulaanbaatar, peaceful post-election protests turned violent. Just two blocks from my apartment opposers of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party shot explosives into MPRP headquarters with Mongolia’s Prime Minister inside. He escaped unharmed, though looters, arsonists and vandals succeeded in causing mass chaos in the downtown area. Gangs of young men lit cars on fire in front of the parliament building in Suhkbatar Square, broke into the National Art Gallery and damaged works, and raided downtown shops. Early morning news reports confirmed three people dead in the violence. Over 60 others, including foreign journalists, have been injured. President Enkhbayar has declared a four day state of emergency and curfew.

The protests began as a reaction to the alleged vote rigging by the MPRP party heads. Official first counts awarded MPRP 41 of the available 76 parliamentary seats, which minority parties say is a sham. They state defiantly that election results have been manipulated. The Democratic Party and other minority parties are up in arms. Gold, copper, zinc, iron and uranium mining will gross billions of dollars in Mongolia in the next ten years. These parties are desperate to secure power positions in determining the spread of wealth.

I walked to work after my coworker called mid-morning to let us know it’s safe to be out in daylight. The streets are unusually quiet. Most foreign embassies and all UN employees were told to stay home from work today. The senior department head of the Mongolian Academy of Science, a fellow Russian speaker, just stopped by my desk to chat.

“There must be,” he said, “equal levels of order, adherence to law, and human rights in Mongolia. Right now, we have none of these.” The violent masses, he said, were victims of poverty gaps. Left behind after business privatization, they rise up now not because of political ideology, but because they are poor and angry. This 30% of the population lives in an extremely rich nation but will likely never enjoy a share of the wealth.

I’m beginning to think that the state of emergency is not just in Ulaanbaatar, but anywhere poverty and hopelessness are left unchecked.

06.30.08: From Geneva, a New MIIS YouTube Playlist!

Courtesy of Professor Jean duPreez’s interviewing prowess, a new playlist – which features several current students discussing their International Professional Service Semester(IPSS) experiences with the United Nations in Geneva – has been added to our YouTube Channel. The IPSS program provides unique, flexible, and challenging opportunities for policy students to gain six months of in-field learning in return for 12 academic credits. Learn more here.   

Or access the entire YouTube playlist here!
And if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Monterey Institute YouTube Channel and explore our additional playlists!

Stay tuned until August for more news about returning students’ IPSS field experiences!