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Robert M. La Follette
School of Public Affairs
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706

Telephone: 608.262.3581
Fax: 608.265.3233

Last updated:
August 18, 2011

Alumni and Friends: La Follette Notes Fall 2006

Students spend summers in Indonesia, El Salvador, Peru and Wisconsin

Second-year La Follette School students spend their summers around the world applying what theyve learned. Here is a sample:

Amanda Hawkins, left, interviews a client in Ayacucho, Peru, with the help of a Quechua translator.

Amanda Hawkins, an international public affairs student, was a client assessment research fellow with FINCA International, a nonprofit with 17 microfinance programs around the world. These programs provide credit to poor entrepreneurs enabling them to generate more income. Hawkins interviewed more than 300 FINCA clients in Peru and El Salvador, assessed the programs in each country and developed two reports that recommended improvements.

Kate Battiato, domestic public affairs, traveled to Budapest and Prague, then she worked as a project and program analyst for the Wisconsin Womens Council, for which she launched the first Governors Trailblazer Award for Women in Business. She also helped Professor Dennis Dresang by doing a job evaluation for a position at the Wisconsin Supreme Court. During the school year she works for Rep. Peggy Krusick as a legislative aide.

International public affairs student Whitney Gantt did a summer internship with The Nature Conservancy in Indonesia. She developed a report on the first ever large-scale Marine Protected Area declared by a district government. I traveled to the protected area and did numerous interviews with representatives from local and international non-governmental organizations, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and local and national governments to document the policy process that enabled the declaration, she says.

Index of La Follette Notes fall 2006