Category Archives: Government

Janie Lee ’15, U.S. Department of Education

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My three days at the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion were such an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence, and I am sur­prised at how much I was able to do in such a short amount of time. My men­tor, Massie Ritsch ’98, is the Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Exter­nal Affairs and Out­reach in the Office of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Out­reach. His office is the liai­son between the pub­lic and the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and is in charge of out­reach to many dif­fer­ent con­stituents, includ­ing par­ents, teach­ers, youth, orga­ni­za­tions, and the com­mu­ni­ties. I thank him and his assis­tant, Kim Mor­ton, for prepar­ing such a won­der­ful three days for me! Despite being at a spe­cific office, I was exposed to many dif­fer­ent offices as well as other depart­ments through­out my three days. It was incredible!

Jan­u­ary 10, 2012

The first day gave me a good overview of what the Office of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Out­reach does. I got a tour of the office and was intro­duced to many dif­fer­ent peo­ple with enthu­si­asm and curios­ity. It felt great being so wel­comed, even as a three-day visitor.

Mr. Ritsch took me out to lunch near the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and dis­cussed every­thing from Prince­ton tra­di­tions to oppor­tu­ni­ties at the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion. It was really help­ful talk­ing to him and being able to see the poten­tial my career had. He was inter­ested in what I wanted to do and what career paths I was con­sid­er­ing. He offered sug­ges­tions and told me about his own experiences.

Later in the after­noon, I went to a meet­ing with Car­rie Jasper, who is in charge of out­reach to par­ents. We met with mem­bers from a group called Mom Con­gress. Mom Con­gress con­sists of moth­ers from every state meet­ing to improve edu­ca­tion through focus­ing on dif­fer­ent issues in each of their com­mu­ni­ties. It was inspir­ing see­ing how hard some par­ents were work­ing in their states and schools to make their schools bet­ter. I took notes for the meet­ing and was able to hear some of the plan­ning details and processes for the Department’s upcom­ing sum­mer conference.

Jan­u­ary 11, 2012:

Janie and Massie Ritsch

In the morn­ing, I made my way to the White House to meet Eddie Lee, who for­merly worked in the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and who is now in the White House Office of Pub­lic Engage­ment. Mr. Lee leads the Office of Pub­lic Engagement’s out­reach to the Asian Amer­i­can and Pacific Islander com­mu­nity. We dis­cussed every­thing from his career path to major issues within the Asian-American and Pacific Islander com­mu­nity, and he gave me some great insight about my future and work­ing in Wash­ing­ton D.C.

Fol­low­ing that, I returned to the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion to attend a meet­ing with my men­tor and stu­dents from Colum­bia Col­lege. This was one of the many con­stituen­cies he meets with to engage and develop rela­tion­ships with.

For the remain­der of the after­noon, I spent time research­ing active par­ent groups for Car­rie. The Depart­ment is look­ing for more out­lets to reach par­ents through so they can dis­sem­i­nate more best prac­tices and infor­ma­tion to them.

Jan­u­ary 12, 2012:

The last day was very excit­ing as I got to make a sec­ond trip to the White House to attend the White House Asian Amer­i­can and Pacific Islander Youth Lead­er­ship Brief­ing. It was an oppor­tu­nity for young Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders to find out what the White House is doing to engage the AAPI youth com­mu­nity and to hear from youth about how they could bet­ter engage them. It was a packed day full of great pan­els and speak­ers includ­ing Chris Lu, the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary for Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, and Raj Shah, the Admin­is­tra­tor for the US Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment. Some of the top­ics dis­cussed in the pan­els and by the speak­ers were pub­lic ser­vice and issues in higher education.

Lastly, I attended the Race to the Top Phil­an­thropy Con­fer­ence at the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Home Builders (NAHB) Build­ing to take notes for one of the smaller dis­cus­sions. At this con­fer­ence, private-sector stake­hold­ers and Race to the Top state team mem­bers explored oppor­tu­ni­ties to share own­er­ship of the imple­men­ta­tion and improve­ment of Race to the Top. I was only able to attend one out of the three days of this con­fer­ence, but it was a great con­fer­ence that involved bring­ing together many pri­vate foun­da­tions, Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Arne Dun­can, and many edu­ca­tions and state workers.

For any­one con­sid­er­ing this Princetern­ship, I would highly encour­age tak­ing this oppor­tu­nity. It is great for any­one inter­ested in edu­ca­tion or gov­ern­ment. I got to see sev­eral aspects of gov­ern­ment and talk to peo­ple in many dif­fer­ent depart­ments. As I trav­eled to dif­fer­ent loca­tions to do spe­cific tasks or meet peo­ple, I was able to get a taste of the entire city and could really see myself liv­ing in Wash­ing­ton D.C. after I grad­u­ated. I loved the envi­ron­ment and the peo­ple in it.

Again, I am so grate­ful to Mr. Ritsch and Career Ser­vices for this oppor­tu­nity. As a fresh­man, hav­ing expo­sure to the gov­ern­ment as a whole and the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion has reaf­firmed my belief that I want to con­tinue learn­ing about edu­ca­tion and enter a career devoted to improv­ing pub­lic education.

Ulili Emore ’13, U.S. Department of Education

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Day 1

My first day at the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion was fan­tas­tic!  Although I have vis­ited Wash­ing­ton, D.C. in the past, noth­ing com­pared to the feel­ing of being amongst the numer­ous gov­ern­ment employ­ees bustling off to var­i­ous agen­cies and hav­ing the sense of being one of them.  When I first arrived at the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion build­ing, I was really ner­vous, not know­ing fully what to expect.  My nerves were soon calmed, how­ever, as I was warmly greeted in the main lobby by a very nice and wel­com­ing Sec­re­tary Assis­tant named Jackie.  After giv­ing me a mini tour of the main office area, Jackie intro­duced me to Mr. Massie Ritsch ‘98, the Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Exter­nal Affairs and Out­reach and my Princetern­ship alumni host.  For the first part of the day, Mr. Ritsch gave me an overview of his depart­ment, the Office of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Out­reach (OCO), describ­ing it as the key line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and the pub­lic sphere.  To ensure mutual com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the Depart­ment and the pub­lic, Mr. Ritsch and his OCO team sponsor/coordinate var­i­ous con­fer­ences and Depart­ment out­reach events through­out the year for com­mu­nity mem­bers, edu­ca­tion asso­ci­a­tions, par­ents, stu­dents, etc.

I was excited to learn that I would have the oppor­tu­nity to help out with one of such out­reach events.  Mr. Ritsch intro­duced me to Ms. Jasper, one of the OCO staff mem­bers charged with Fam­ily Engagement/Parent Out­reach ini­tia­tives.  In order to help with the Department’s upcom­ing out­reach event to pro­mote the active role of father par­tic­i­pa­tion in a child’s edu­ca­tional devel­op­ment, I entered the names and email addresses of poten­tial par­tic­i­pants and cospon­sors into a spread­sheet.  In addi­tion, Ms. Jasper also asked me to research var­i­ous stud­ies that high­lighted the ben­e­fits of hav­ing active par­ents, par­tic­u­larly fathers, involved in the edu­ca­tion process of their chil­dren.  I really enjoyed doing this research because it allowed me to use the skills I’ve learned here at Prince­ton while also giv­ing me an oppor­tu­nity to con­tribute in a mean­ing­ful way to some of the Depart­ment of Education’s upcom­ing events.

Day 2

Day two at the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion proved to be just as great as the first.  My day began by accom­pa­ny­ing Mr. Ritsch to his first two meet­ings of the day.  At the first meet­ing, I was able to lis­ten in as sev­eral OCO mem­bers dis­cussed the Department’s upcom­ing Col­lege Afford­abil­ity Lis­ten­ing Tour sched­uled to stop at var­i­ous col­lege and high school cam­puses through­out the coun­try.  Given the sig­nif­i­cance of col­lege afford­abil­ity in my own expe­ri­ence, I really appre­ci­ated being able to sit in on this meet­ing and learn how the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion works to keep the pub­lic informed about the recent devel­op­ments and oppor­tu­ni­ties for fed­eral fund­ing when it comes to higher edu­ca­tion.  The sec­ond meet­ing I attended with Mr. Ritsch was the Out­reach Team Meet­ing dur­ing which I got a brief overview of all the dif­fer­ent events and projects that were cur­rently under­way at the Depart­ment.  I really enjoyed being able to sit in on this meet­ing because it gave me an oppor­tu­nity to really see just how multi-faceted the oper­a­tions of the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion truly are.

In addi­tion to these larger group meet­ings, I also met one-on-one with sev­eral other indi­vid­u­als who worked in dif­fer­ent areas of the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion.  I spoke with Dr. Grim­stead, Man­ager of the Pres­i­den­tial Schol­ars Pro­gram, a pro­gram that awards and cel­e­brates a lim­ited num­ber of extremely excep­tional high school stu­dents each year.  Dur­ing my dis­cus­sion with her, Dr. Grim­stead told me about her own per­sonal jour­ney of com­ing to work at the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and pro­vided me with some really good advice on how a grad­u­ate degree can be uti­lized within var­i­ous areas of the Depart­ment.  As I am begin­ning to plot my own future plans, talk­ing with Dr. Grim­stead pro­vided me with a greater per­spec­tive on the ben­e­fits and draw­backs of going straight to grad­u­ate school after grad­u­a­tion ver­sus gain­ing actual work­ing expe­ri­ence in the field of edu­ca­tion first through intern­ships and fel­low­ships (many of which can be pro­vided by the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, as was Dr. Grimstead’s experience).

Day 3

The third and final day of my Princetern­ship at the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion was really jam-packed.  I started my day by fin­ish­ing up the spread­sheet of names and emails of poten­tial par­tic­i­pants and cospon­sors for the Department’s upcom­ing out­reach event to pro­mote the active role of father par­tic­i­pa­tion in child­hood edu­ca­tion for Ms. Jasper.  After­wards, I pre­sented her with the bit of research that I was able to find on the sub­ject.  Next, I attended a one-on-one meet­ing with Ms. Chong, the Coor­di­na­tor of Mid­dle East­ern and North African Affairs in the Inter­na­tional Affairs office of the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion.  As I talked with Ms. Chong, I was fas­ci­nated by how her expe­ri­ences liv­ing and work­ing abroad in Morocco led her to her cur­rent posi­tion at the Depart­ment.  She also told me about a recent sum­mit she helped to coor­di­nate in which the Depart­ment hosted rep­re­sen­ta­tives from twenty dif­fer­ent coun­tries who came together to discuss/compare their var­i­ous edu­ca­tion sys­tems, from teacher prepa­ra­tion to cur­ricu­lum plans.  I learned so much from my dis­cus­sion with Ms. Chong, par­tic­u­larly about how the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion has so many oppor­tu­ni­ties for those indi­vid­u­als who are inter­ested in com­par­a­tive edu­ca­tional poli­cies across cul­tures and countries. 

After my meet­ing with Ms. Chong, I then met with Ms. Watkins-Foote, the Direc­tor of African Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Out­reach.  She and I had a really great talk as she told me about the dif­fer­ent posi­tions she had held within the Depart­ment prior to arriv­ing at the OCO.  She let me know of all the flex­i­bil­ity there is within the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion as well as con­nect­ing me with some great con­tact peo­ple that could help me with my own academic/career inter­ests regard­ing edu­ca­tional strat­i­fi­ca­tion amongst African Amer­i­can stu­dents.  Next on my agenda was a phone con­fer­ence call with Mr. Michel, the Senior Advi­sor for Eco­nomic Growth and Trade for US Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment (USAID).  Given my sum­mer study abroad to Tan­za­nia this past year, Mr. Michel and I were able to com­pare our expe­ri­ences in Tan­za­nia with one another.  He also informed me about some of the ongo­ing mis­sions hap­pen­ing within East­ern Africa and gave me some great infor­ma­tion about poten­tial intern­ships in Tan­za­nia and Kenya with USAID for this upcom­ing summer.

All in all, I was very pleased with my Princetern­ship expe­ri­ence at the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion.  Every­one at the Depart­ment made me feel very wel­come and was more than will­ing to sit down and talk with me and answer any ques­tions I had.  Any­one who is inter­ested in the plethora of oppor­tu­ni­ties that can come from work­ing for the fed­eral gov­ern­ment should def­i­nitely con­sider this Princeternship.