Indiana Alumni Magazine
On-the-Job Training
Most students work summer internships, often at big companies and exotic places
By Lanetta J. Williams
Mariella Arredondo analyzed the country's bilingual-intercultural education policy during a 2005 internship in Peru. Photo by Kendall Reeves, Spectrum Studio.
In more ways than one, New Jersey seems worlds away from Mariella Arredondo's birthplace of Peru. First there is the distance, more than 3,500 miles. Then, there's the language. Arredondo moved to Montclair, N.J., at age 9, with her brother and mother. After the move, she struggled with English, sparking a lifelong curiosity in languages and how they affect the way children learn.
"Issues of ethnic and cultural identity have always interested me, because in one way or another they have always been part of my life," she says.
Arredondo, who has completed coursework for a doctoral degree in the IU School of Education, wanted to see firsthand how a recent government policy introducing indigenous languages into Peruvian classrooms works. During an internship with the National Directional Office on Bilingual and Intercultural Education in Lima, Peru, Arredondo analyzed the country’s bilingual-intercultural education policy. The policy aims to incorporate indigenous languages, which are spoken at home, into classrooms where students are taught in the predominant Spanish. So with the encouragement of a simple e-mail, she returned to her native country where, she writes, “The air is pure and the water clean enough to drink from a stream.”
Like Arredondo, many IU students spend their summers not in bathing suits but in business attire. They intern at Fortune 500 companies around the world, national media outlets, not-for-profits, and with foreign governments. According to Justin Grossman, MM’04, who helps students find those coveted experiences, more than 80 percent of college students will complete an internship before entering the workforce. That’s up dramatically from the 1980s, when an internship was a sign of an overachiever. Today, internships provide vital networking opportunities and experience.
“Employers really value internships, no matter what field it’s in,” says Grossman, assistant director of the Career Development Center/Arts & Sciences Career Services at IU Bloomington. “The more relevant the better.”
In the summer of 2005, IU students traveled to exotic nations, countries in flux, and foreign destinations close to home. They bumped into the heads of nations, traveled across mountains, and saw the tricky dance of foreign policy from the confines of a U.S. Embassy, all to return to Indiana with valuable work experience and a story to tell.
Education Idealist in Peru
“I grew up in a part of Peruvian society that valued the learning of languages and that admired other cultures,” says Mariella Arredondo. “Speaking certain languages was a symbol of prestige and power. By speaking other languages, it was a [sign] of inferior social status.”
For her part, Arredondo wanted to break those stereotypes. So she couldn’t resist the opportunity to show the importance of students being taught first in their mother tongue and then in a second language. When she arrived in Cotabambas — a province in the Apurímac region of central Peru — an entire community of parents had gathered to argue with the school principal about the new bilingual curriculum teaching both Spanish and the local indigenous language. Though most children spoke languages like Quechua, Aymara, and Ashaninka at home and only knew a few Spanish words, parents were opposed to children being taught using indigenous languages.
“Most parents wanted just Spanish to be taught, because they see Spanish as [having] outward mobility purposes,” Arredondo says.
So she thought it better to show than to tell.
Arredondo addressed the group in English. For several minutes, she spoke to a crowd of people who had probably never heard English about the importance of students initially learning in their native language.
For her efforts, she received blank stares, which prompted the principal to explain in Quechua that just as they had not understood what she was saying to them in English, in the beginning, their children don’t understand what the teacher explains in Spanish. Arredondo wrote later that “the little exercise seemed to have helped reach a consensus in favor of bilingual education in that particular setting.”
Throughout the summer, Arredondo analyzed policy, as well as national curricula content in various subjects in order to prepare classroom curriculum to become intercultural.
Near the end of the internship, she spent time zigzagging through the Andean Mountains, visiting rural villages, and evaluating the education system. She found schools with obstacles such as no running water, high student-to-teacher ratios, few teaching materials, and students of all grade levels learning in the same classroom.
Arredondo is currently looking for funding to return for a seven-month documentary project in which she’ll place cameras in the hands of children and allow them to show life and learning from their perspectives.
“I’m an idealist,” she says. “A lot of indigenous groups are fighting back, not with arms but with academia. Indigenous people want to decolonize academia, ways of creating knowledge, and making knowledge valid, and that’s where I want my contribution to come in.”
Communicator in Canada
Jen Riggs ran into the prime minister of Canada, literally, during her internship in the Canadian Parliament. Photo by Randy Johnson.
Jen Riggs had never been outside the United States, let alone worked in a nation’s capital, when she found herself hustling through the House of Commons in Ottawa, Canada. At the same time, Canadian Prime Minster Paul Martin was running up the stairs.
“I just literally ran into the prime minister,” Riggs says. “He was just really open to meeting people.”
In 2005 Riggs interned for six weeks with the Canadian Parliament in the office of Parliament member Jim Karygiannis.
Riggs, a Tipton, Ind., native, couldn’t have picked a better opportunity to see the inner workings of a democracy. At the time, there was talk that the Canadian government may “fall.” The House of Commons was to vote on a federal budget, and if it failed the prime minister would be forced to dissolve Parliament and call an election.
A liberal prime minister, Martin set May 19, 2005, as the vote. The House of Commons had been at a standstill for weeks, demanding Martin resign. The opposition stemmed from a money-laundering scandal within Martin’s Liberal Party.
The House of Commons comfortably passed the Liberal Party’s budget, 250–54, and the government remained intact. Riggs spent her time writing press releases, conducting research, presenting material, planning events, and helping Karygiannis with speeches.
“I got to learn about their culture, learn how they communicate, and learn how different people function in the business world,” says Riggs, 22, a communications arts major at IU Kokomo, with an English and history minor. “It really forced me to go outside my element. I was dealing with top businessmen on a daily basis and had to prove myself. It just kind of shows that you can really push past what you thought were your limits.”
Riggs now works as a copy editor at Wiley Publishing in Indianapolis.
Diplomacy in Turkmenistan
Richard Fitzmaurice interned at the U.S. Embassy in Turkmenistan. He seeks a career abroad with the U.S. State Department. Courtesy photo.
As a Peace Corps volunteer, Richard Fitzmaurice had found a second home in Turkmenistan, the Central Asian country bordered in part by Afghanistan, Iran, and the Caspian Sea. But the program was abruptly suspended after Sept. 11, 2001, and with hardly time to say goodbye, he found himself on his way home. So when he had an opportunity to return in 2005, he jumped at the chance to go back to a country of dramatic red cliffs overlooking the Caspian Sea and temperatures that climb to 120 degrees.
Fitzmaurice, who has completed two years of a three-year dual-degree program in Russian and East European Studies and master of public affairs, interned with the U.S. Embassy in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. The summer abroad offered Fitzmaurice the opportunity to focus on work related to his career goal — to work abroad for the U.S. State Department or the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Over 10 weeks, he spent half his time in the political-economic section of the embassy and the other half in public affairs. He researched and wrote diplomatic cables, edited reports, and put together a trip book, which included talking points and background for meetings among VIP guests from Washington, D.C., the Turkmenistan foreign minister, and other top government officials.
“It’s very interesting, but definitely working in the embassy and working as a Peace Corps volunteer is very different,” says the 28-year-old Poughkeepsie, N.Y., native. “It’s a very closed society, and there’s no free media. But when you’re working in the embassy, you have a much better sense of what’s going on in the country.”
What’s going on are the challenges of a developing nation. Turkmenistan has only been independent from the Soviet Union since 1991. Saparmurat Niyazov was appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers in 1985 and elected president of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic in 1990. He retains absolute control over the country, and opposition is not tolerated. Niyazov’s face adorns many everyday objects, from banknotes to bottles of vodka. The two books he’s written are mandatory school readings.
“It’s kind of an isolated region that I think a lot of Americans don’t know a lot about,” Fitzmaurice says of Turkmenistan. “It’s definitely a region in flux, and for that reason I think it’s important to have a strong U.S. presence there to move them in the direction of democracy and free market.”
This past summer, Fitzmaurice took part in a trip through the European Union. The series of classes and lectures were in France, Belgium, Poland, and Germany. He also spent the summer interning in Washington, D.C., at the Government Accountability Office, working for the International Affairs Trade, which evaluates U.S. government programs.
Good Experience, Low Risk
Grossman has a list of about 100 companies where IU students are interning this year — from PricewaterhouseCoopers in Chicago to MTV in Santa Monica, Calif. He says that internships are good experiences, because students get to be engaged in a professional work environment but avoid some of the major responsibilities and risks they might encounter as a full-time professional.
He says students also get to check that dream job to see if it’s so dreamy after all. And while you don’t have to travel to the farthest reaches of the globe for a great internship, Grossman says it can’t hurt.
“While students are strongly encouraged to pursue any internship experience that interests them and allows them to develop and explore, international internships can be especially beneficial because the experience is occurring in a completely unfamiliar place where students will learn additional life and cultural skills beyond what they will pick up in an internship,” he says. “Plus, employers
often find internships and experience abroad highly desirable.” 
Lanetta J. Williams is a graduate student in the School of Journalism at IU Bloomington. She is the editorial intern at the Indiana Alumni Magazine.