internships

City of Monterey Recognizes MIIS Students for Exceptional Contribution to Climate Action Plan

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu careers, Energy and Climate Change, Environment, Featured, IEP, internships, newsroom
Climate Action Plan

Matthew Nichols (MAIEP ’14) and Gabriel Kiritz (MAIEP ’14) with members of the Monterey City Council.

Proving yet again that the Monterey Institute prepares students to take on the most pressing issues of our time and “be the solution” in their chosen field, on May 6 the City of Monterey recognized the outstanding contribution of two graduating MIIS students to their Climate Action Plan.

The students, Gabriel Kiritz (MAIEP ’14) and Matthew Nichols (MAIEP ’14), both of the International Environmental Policy program, were specially recognized for their superb analytic and critical thinking skills by their supervisor, Sustainability Coordinator Ted. J. Terrasas. Mayor Chuck Della Sala thanked them on behalf of the City of Monterey, and also recognized MIIS Career and Academic Advisor Edy Rhodes and Director of Outreach and Employer Relations Dayton Hughes for their role in shaping and promoting the internship.

Matthew describes the eight-month internship with the City of Monterey as a “unique and exciting opportunity” to put theory from his academic program into practice at the local level. By working on the Climate Action Plan, Gabriel adds, not only did they gain “invaluable experience in a specific issue” (climate policy), they also had the opportunity to develop their core competencies of policy and data analysis, technical writing, collaboration, and communication.

Matthew goes on to say that the experience of synthesizing hundreds of pages of data and statutes into a series of appropriate policy recommendations was both a great learning experience and a challenge to think outside the box. Both students are happy to add this internship to their resumes, recognizing the value of gaining real-world job experience as part of their degree program.

Matthew and Gabriel will both be honored as “Graduates with Distinction” at Spring Commencement on May 17.

MIIS Student Wins Projects for Peace Fellowship for Cholera Prevention Project in Haiti

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu development, Featured, Fellowships, internships, IPS, newsroom, social_change
Wesley Laine

Wesley Laine (MAIPS ’14) holding one of the beneficiaries of his innovative water project.

Monterey Institute student Wesley Laine (MAIPS ’14) will receive $10,000 in funding for his Cholera prevention project in Haiti through the prestigious Projects for Peace fellowship. “I am really grateful to MIIS and the Kathryn Davis Foundation for believing in my project — Cholera Prevention: Service, Solidarity, and Peace,” says Wesley. The foundation’s Projects for Peace initiative encourages students at the Davis United World College Scholars Program partner schools to design grassroots projects that promote peace and address the root causes of conflict among parties. The fellowship is funded by the Davis family in honor of Kathryn W. Davis, a lifetime internationalist and philanthropist, who died last year at the age of 106. She founded the program when she turned 100 years old, challenging young leaders to “bring about a mind-set of preparing for peace, instead of preparing for war.”

Wesley is very passionate about his bottom-up approach to form a real partnership with people in rural Haiti to improve hygiene with the aim of preventing waterborne pathogens, especially cholera. His work has been featured at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting (see news story from October 2013). He likens the project to a marathon and says: “I am in it until the end. That is my promise to my compatriots in Haiti.”

Applicants for Projects for Peace fellowships are encouraged to use their creativity to design projects and employ innovative techniques for engaging project participants in ways that focus on conflict resolution, reconciliation, building understanding and breaking down barriers which cause conflict, and finding solutions for resolving conflicts and maintaining peace. Wesley has designed his project to “empower the individual agency with a focus on establishing a preferential option for the poor.” He is very happy with the many professional growth opportunities he has been provided with through his studies at the Monterey Institute, including a semester in Paris with Middlebury Schools Abroad and Development Project Management Institute intensive training program in Rwanda this January.

Student Teams Compete in MIIS Water Innovation Challenge

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu development, Featured, internships, MPA, newsroom, social_change
Water Innovation Challenge

Participants in this spring’s water innovation challenge gather in the Digital Learning Commons’ Design Space to work on this wicked problem.

As our motto, to “be the solution,” indicates, a Monterey Institute degree involves much more than classroom theory. Monterey Institute students have numerous opportunities via immersive learning experiences to develop their professional skills by completing fieldwork and working on real-life issues as part of their class assignments. This spring semester, a group of faculty and staff from across the Institute has launched an innovation challenge for teams of students willing to tackle a true wicked problem.

The challenge, Nor Any Drop to Drink? – Securing the Future of Monterey County’s Fresh Water Supply, involves participating in a series of stakeholder conversations and workshops and working with teams to come up with solutions to a problem that is at once very local and yet global in its wickedness. As Professor Kent Glenzer of the Development Practice and Policy program says, it serves three main purposes: “First, it promotes interdisciplinary work among students, and stretches them to look across degree silos. Complex problems don’t lend themselves to single-discipline solutions. Second, it gives students a real-world laboratory for trying out what they are learning in the classroom. And third, it allows students to engage with local stakeholders – the powerful and the excluded – and forces them to find solutions that are acceptable by many. And it’s a great networking opportunity to boot!”

Ten teams have risen to the challenge and started to interact with stakeholders and experts. They have been tasked with coming up with ideas that are:

  • sustainable across future generations
  • progessive regarding economic growth
  • affordable,
  • socially,economically and politically just, and
  • compelling to local stakeholders

A panel of external judges will select winners in late April. The team with the idea deemed best by the judges will receive a monetary award of $2,500.