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Euro may overtake dollar as currency held by central banks, study suggests
Reuters news service reports on a study that suggests the euro could replace the dollar as the world's dominant reserve currency within 20 years if Britain and other European Union countries adopt it and the dollar continues to fall. The study by Menzie Chinn of the La Follette School and Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard University was released in early August by the National Bureau of Economic Research. See Euro may become top reserve currency by 2022 ― study-- posted Aug. 29, 2005
Students intern around the world in public and private sectors
La Follette School students are sharing their analytical skills with state and federal agencies, businesses and non-profit organizations around the world this summer.
Two La Follette students in international public affairs are interning with the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka, while a third is with the U.S. Embassy in Panama.
Jeff Sartin, a student in the international public affairs program, is working in the Economic and Commercial Section of the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He has prepared official documents reporting on the public financial structure of Sri Lanka's local governments, and he is designing a campaign advocating enforcement of intellectual property rights. The campaign serves as a mechanism for Sri Lanka's business community and central government to work with the U.S. mission to attract increased foreign investment. In addition, he is promoting U.S. government tsunami reconstruction recommendations to the government of Sri Lanka. The best part of his experience "is being involved in the formation of public policy and working with the government of Sri Lanka on their long-term disaster management plans," Sartin reports. After graduation he hopes "to work on sustainable development projects throughout Asia, preferably with the State Department or the U.S. Agency for International Development."
The second student in Sri Lanka, Melissa Miller, is focusing on humanitarian issues, dealing with child recruitment by the Liberation Tamil Tigers Eelam, human rights supreme court cases and tsunami relief. During a trip to the southern provinces of Sri Lanka, Miller analyzed the political and economic impact of the tsunami at the post six-month mark and the status of nongovernment and government rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts.
Roberto Dall'Asta is interning for the U.S. Embassy in Panama with the Public Affairs Section for the Information Office and the Cultural Affairs Office. "My duties include analyzing the Panamanian press and reviewing existing linkages between the academic communities in Panama and the U.S.," says the master of international public affairs candidate.
A little closer to Madison, Bai Linh Hoang, a master of public affairs candidate, is working with the Department of Human Services in Salem, Oregon. She is helping with the implementation of new policy procedures for the department’s Child, Adult and Family Services Unit. Her major task is to research and analyze child welfare-related issues, such as comparing state policies on child welfare, researching training curricula for social workers, and compiling and organizing survey information. "This internship is refining and improving my research skills, which is important to conducting good policy analysis," Hoang says. "This internship is also providing me with the opportunity to explore the area of human services, particularly social welfare policy, which is my concentration at La Follette."
Public affairs student Hope Siler is working in Seattle, Wash., at a non-profit organization called Program for Early Parent Support. She spends half of her time leading parent education and support groups for mothers and fathers bringing home new babies for the first time. She also is reviewing literature on parent education and support research, curriculum development and best practices. “I am getting firsthand experience with non-profit management, organizational change, and program implementation and evaluation,” she says. “It has been an enlightening summer!”
Out east, Camille Salas, a master of public affairs candidate, served as planning and initiatives intern with the executive office of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Va. Some of her major projects have included: developing a white paper on the organization’s federal funding, researching federal funding opportunities, participating in strategic planning meetings, writing a grant for the release of state funding, inviting government officials to performances at Wolf Trap, and helping to draft the organization’s annual state report. “Some of the perks of working at Wolf Trap have included attending concerts by performers such as Seal, Chicago and John Hiatt for free,” Salas reports.
Outside her internship, Salas started a letter-writing campaign to the president of Urban Outfitters Inc. requesting the removal of a shirt that is discriminatory to Latinos. The shirt reads, “New Mexico — Cleaner than Regular Mexico.” “The shirt’s slogan conjures up a negative stereotypes of Mexico and Mexicans as ‘dirty,’” Salas says. The campaign reached the attention of the founder of www.bluelatinos.org and a petition was started that has thus far received 1,100 signatures, Salas reports. An article about the group’s efforts was posted July 21, 2005, on Philly.com.
Laura Antuono is interning at the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. She monitored the implementation and progress of government funded anti-trafficking programs in the Western hemisphere. "I have observed how careful cooperation among U.S. government agencies as well as international diplomacy and negotiation between governments can lead to significant results in combating modern-day slavery," she says. "I am learning quite a bit about government service, international programming and analysis (and of course, the nature of a bureaucracy)."
Several La Follette students are working for state agencies in Wisconsin.
Karina B. Silver continues her internship as a program planning analyst at the Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance’s Violence Against Women Act program, a position she will hold until she graduates. "I've been doing extensive research on human trafficking and on the immigrant population in Wisconsin with a focus on the services and remedies available to battered immigrants," she says. She also monitors a new grant program that funds services to aid children who witness domestic abuse.
An international public affairs student, Silver credits alum Sara Mooren’s earlier work as a program intern as prompting the office to request another La Follette School student. Mooren, a 2004 graduate, is now working for the Children’s Trust Fund to implement the federal grant she worked on at the Office of Justice Assistance.
The Office of Wisconsin Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton is employing Brenda Mayrack and Jennifer Gulig Klippel as interim policy directors. Their duties include traveling with and assisting Lawton at events across the state, tracking policy issues and contributing research for public remarks. Mayrack, who is from Menomonee Falls, has been helping plan a conference this fall that will encourage communities to invest in quality early childhood care and education in order to spur economic growth. Klippel assists the Task Force on Women and Depression and the Study of Women and Corrections.
Klippel also is working for the UW-Madison Provost’s Office as a project assistant. The Green Bay native is analyzing the progress of the campus’ cluster hiring initiative that focuses on identifying faculty hires who can collaborate on interdisciplinary programs and emerging areas of academic inquiry. She is developing a web site showcasing this model program and planning a conference for cluster-hired faculty to network and share best practices.
Jamie Aulik is working at the Wisconsin Senate for the sergeant at arms, mainly attending to the Joint Committee on Finance and general state of Wisconsin budget issues. He spent two weeks for the Army Reserve at extended combat training in Fort Gordon, Ga., for Operation GOLDEN MEDIC. He is taking two classes in UW-Madison's Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis Department, one on school principalship and the other on program evaluation.
John J. Vander Meer's summer internship with the Wisconsin Department of Justice turned into a limited-term employment position as the communications and public policy coordinator. He writes news releases, crafts messages, organizes events and responds to media requests. He has had the opportunity to work with the department's communication director and the attorney general. He hopes to continue with the department during the school year.
Erin Rushmer was hired for the summer as an AmeriCorps VISTA associate in Madison as part of a program called Preschools of Hope. She works with low-income 4- and 5-year-olds, helping them improve their literacy and math skills, and generally getting them ready to start kindergarten in the fall. "It has thus far been incredibly rewarding," she says, "and it has offered me a firsthand look at education policy."
In the private sector, international public affairs student Richard Barajas is working at the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua in Madison. He is focusing on their microcredit work, which involves making very small loans to people who usually are too poor and who lack collateral. The Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua takes money from U.S. investors and loans it to Nicaraguan microcredit institutions. These small loans, for about $300, are often given to women who set up small at-home businesses that could involve sewing or selling staple foods, he says. Barajas also will travel to Mexico City for a couple of weeks.
Mary Regan is working on fund raising and capital campaigns as a development assistant with the Atwood Community Center in Madison. She is helping with the center’s $9 million capital campaign to purchase and renovate the Kupfer Ironworks building on Madison’s east side so all of the center’s programs can be housed under one roof. Interested in a career in development and philanthropy, she is helping to plan and manage the capital campaign. This includes researching grants and foundations, working with fund-raising software and putting together a calendar to manage all the deadlines, projects, meetings and tasks involved in such a campaign. “I enjoy exploring the psychology behind philanthropic giving,” says Regan, whose UW-Madison bachelor’s degree is in psychology. “People give for different reasons and to be able to get people to donate, you have to first know what motivates them and then work from there. I also like the job because it is about developing relationships and being creative.”
Master of public affairs candidate Jenna Griffin is interning with Alliant Energy’s Public Affairs Department and learning about the energy industry and campaign finance. “With Alliant's help, I have met several state and national level politicians (and a few La Follette alumni) at various legislative hearings, fund-raisers, and conferences,” she reports. “This internship supplements my classroom knowledge with firsthand exposure to the political process.”
-- posted July 21, 2005; updated July 22, July 27, Aug. 2, Aug. 23, 2005
Faculty share knowledge, publish books
La Follette School faculty are spending the summer working with other scholars, making presentations and conducting research.Bob Haveman, professor emeritus of economics and public affairs is spending a week in July at the Center for Economic Studies in Munich, Germany. While there, he'll be working with researchers to develop a method with which to estimate the level and utilization of human capital, to be included in the national income accounts of that country. The work is based upon the method of his 2003 book, Human Capital in the United States from 1975 to 2000: Patterns of Growth and Utilization,with co-authors Andrew Bershadker and Jonathan A. Schwabish.
In addition to publishing the fifth edition of his co-authored Politics and Policy in American States and Communities, Dennis Dresang helped coordinate the 11th Bowhay Institute for Legislative Leadership Development, the only leadership training program exclusively for Midwestern legislators. He taught an online course for students completing internship programs and conducted research on succession planning for the pending wave of baby boomer retirements in public agencies. Dresang, a professor of political science and public affairs, also went bicycling in Nova Scotia.
During the spring and summer of 2005, Jonathan Zeitlin published the book, The Open Method of Co-ordination in Action: The European Employment and Social Inclusion Strategies (co-edited with Philippe Pochet, Brussels: Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes-Peter Lang), and a chapter on "Social Europe and Experimentalist Governance: Towards a New Constitutional Compromise?", in EU Law and the Welfare State: In Search of Solidarity (edited by Gráinne de Búrca, Oxford University Press, to appear this September). The professor of sociology, public affairs, political science and history gave invited presentations and papers on research to conferences and seminars at St. Antony's College, Oxford; the London School of Economics; the European University Institute, Florence; the European Center for Local and Regional Development, University of Florence; the Research Unit on European Governance (URGE), Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin; the Graduate School in Social, Economic, and Political Sciences, University of Milan; and the Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex, Brighton (UK).
-- posted July 18, 2005
Holden gives several presentations
Karen Holden, a professor of public affairs and consumer science, is making several presentations this summer as she begins her term as the La Follette School's associate director.She will present a paper authored with La Follette School professors Robert Haveman and Barbara Wolfe, on July 23 at the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population in Tours, France. In June, she presented at Edgewood College's Summer Financial Institution on Social Security and Economic Security and gave a paper authored with Haveman and Wolfe at a workshop organized by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, Copenhagen, on "pension reform." Holden was one of two keynote presenters at a panel in May on Social Security reform organized by Women's Task Force of the Chicago Bar Association. In May she appeared on Madison television station NBC 15 to talk about United Airlines pensions and implications for retirement security.
Between professional gigs, her Cajun Band played Wheatland Traditional Arts Festival during Memorial Day and Oshkosh Sawdust Days at the end of June -- and several spots around Madison.
-- posted July 13, 2005; updated July 18, 2005
Manion wins grants for research in China
La Follette School professor Melanie Manion has a Chiang Ching-kuo Scholar Grant and a Fulbright Research Award that she will use to research the electoral losses by the official candidates who are vetted and pre-selected by communist party committees for leadership positions in mainland China.
The research focuses on lower levels of state organization, where change in the past decade has been substantial and implications for governance are of broad significance for the political system. Official candidates can lose in recent years because of changes in the rules by which leading groups are formed. These rule changes implicitly accept some communist-party candidate losses as the price for anticipated gains to the party as an organization. At a more profound level, official candidates can lose because of changes in expectations in the relationship between ordinary Chinese citizens and their elected people’s congress delegates on the one hand and these delegates and communist party committee selectorates on the other.-- posted July 11, 2005
La Follette draws 37 Midwestern legislators for five days of training
Two legislators listen to La Follette School alum Marlia Moore talk about Medicaid during one of the presentations at the Bowhay Institute for Legislative Leadership offered by the La Follette School with the Midwestern Legislative Conference of the Council of State Governments.
Thirty-seven legislators from 11 states and three Canadian provinces are gathering in Madison this week for five days of intensive leadership and professional development training offered by the La Follette School of Public Affairs in partnership with the Midwestern Legislative Conference of the Council of State Governments.
The Bowhay Institute for Legislative Leadership Development (BILLD) is the only leadership training program exclusively for Midwestern legislators. It helps newer legislators develop the skills necessary to become effective leaders, informed decision-makers and astute policy analysts.“Every year we look forward to bringing together lawmakers from around the Midwest,” says Dennis Dresang, the main La Follette School faculty member involved in the institute. “They learn about policy initiatives underway in other states and provinces, share ideas and give us academics insight into research to conduct.”
In addition to leadership training, such as conflict resolution and negotiation, BILLD provides policy seminars on issues such as education, corrections, land use, economic development and welfare, as well as professional seminars on media relations and priority management.
Through the program, lawmakers explore issues with nationally renowned scholars, professional development experts, and legislative leaders and colleagues from across the region.
Dennis Dresang La Follette School alum Marlia Moore, a fiscal analyst with the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, joins Thomas Hefty, former chair and chief executive officer of Cobalt Corp. and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wisconsin in a discussion about Medicaid and how policy-makers handle trade-offs related to access, quality, quantity and cost of health care.
In addition to Dresang, La Follette School faculty members Andrew Reschovsky and Director Donald A. Nichols will present.
Nichols presents one of the institute’s new sessions, “The China Threat to Midwestern Competitiveness and Efficiency.” He observes that in the 1980s, Japan was the economic enemy of American manufacturing, yet many businesses had a resurgence. Based on his research and travel, Nichols will suggest what Midwest manufacturers should bear in mind 20 years later.
The political and cultural characteristics of the Midwest are the focus of a presentation by Dresang, who also will address leadership types and legislative decision-making. Reschovsky will explore school funding and accountability.
Another new session will help lawmakers understand the basics of ethics, work on practical applications in the legislative workplace and recognize, navigate and resolve ethical dilemmas.
This is the 11th year that the La Follette School and the Midwestern Legislative Conference of The Council of State Governments have offered the institute.
It was started by Virginia Thrall, then director of the Midwestern Office of the Council of State Governments, and Professor Peter Eisinger, then director of the La Follette Institute. Since then, BILLD has graduated more than 325 alumni.
“Many BILLD alumni have moved into top leadership positions within their legislatures,” Dresang says. “Others have become lieutenant governors, members of Congress and heads of executive agencies. The institute graduates some of the most promising new legislators in the region to share knowledge and learn from each other.”-- posted July 5, 2005; updated July 11, 20055
Heinrich explores effects of poverty program in Brazil
La Follette School professor and poverty expert Carolyn Heinrich has just returned from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where she participated in a seminar to inform the impact evaluation of Brazil's Bolsa Familia program, "Seminário: Pesquisa de Avaliação do Impacto do Programa Bolsa Familia." The poverty reduction/human capital development program (Bolsa Familia) serves 28 million poor people and is expected to enroll more than 50 million as it advances.-- posted July 5, 2005; revised July 11, 2005
Students present final workshop projects to clients
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La Follette School students in the Public Affairs Workshops in domestic and international issues completed seven research projects, with five of the groups presenting their findings and recommendations to their clients.
The Domestic Issues class taught by Andrew Reschovsky played to a full house for the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, mayor of Madison, mayor of Milwaukee and a joint legislative committee.
"It is nothing short of amazing to see what good scholarship comes from the students each year," says La Follette School outreach director Terry Shelton. "Each audience (the Madison one had about 40 people) was very respectful and impressed by the work, based on their comments and questions."
- About 15 legislators of the Wisconsin Joint Legislative Council heard about long-term health-care problems for the Wisconsin's growing aged population.
- Revenue Secretary Mike Morgan and a team of analysts were given a report on Wisconsin's machinery and equipment tax exemptions.
- Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and his Dept. of Administration were given an analysis on a potential local city sales tax.
- Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, the Madison Plan Commission and the Madison Economic Development Commission held a joint meeting on May 11, 2005, to hear a report on the city's development and permit process. The Economic Development Commission later endorsed the La Follette School's recommendations, and the report garnered attention from the Wisconsin State Journal in its June 12, 2005, edition.
On the international side, Melanie Manion's students looked at a range of issues.
- One group examined the effects of the expiration of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement on South Asia and presented findings to the sponsoring agency in Washington, D.C.
- Another group made recommendations to help Mexico City's police department reduce sexual harassment and discrimination.
- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development received a summary of objectives and strategies that metropolitan governments around the world use to pursue livability and competitiveness, and it explored partnerships between governments and non-governmental organizations to provide services.
The workshops are the capstone courses of the La Follette School's two master's degree programs, the Master of International Public Affairs and the Master of Public Affairs. The students work in teams to produce carefully crafted reports that meet high professional and academic standards and address problems in the public, non-governmental and private sectors.
Business hopes city is listening, June 12, 2005, Wisconsin State Journal
-- posted June 22, 2005, updated June 24, Sept. 30, Oct. 14, 2005; updated Oct. 23, 2007
Chinn explores U.S. trade deficit, current account sustainability
The U.S. trade deficit is the subject of research in June and July by La Follette School professor Menzie Chinn, who is a visiting fellow with the Congressional Budget Office in the Macroeconomic Analysis Division.Earlier in June, at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference on current account sustainability, Chinn and Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard University presented a paper on whether the euro will overtake the dollar as a currency held by central banks. Their work received attention in the Indian and Italian press and on blogs.
-- posted June 22, 2005, revised June 24, 2005, July 29, 2005
Graduation emphasizes importance of public service
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La Follette School students listen to Gov. Jim
Doyle encourage them to understand the value of service to
other people.
Photos by Eric Wuennenberg, Performance Photo |
The importance of public service was the theme of the La Follette School graduation May 14 in the Assembly chamber of the Wisconsin Capitol.Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle touched on Wisconsin’s tradition of public service and Robert M. La Follette’s legacy in public service in his graduation speech. Doyle encouraged graduates to engage in public service with the understanding they will benefit from the experience as much as their communities.
“Every one of you is the product of countless investments made by your family, friends, communities, professors and even your state,” Doyle said. “And today you walk out of here with the tools to return on those investments tenfold.”
Doyle acknowledged how the governor’s office has benefited from those investments: “I feel personally indebted to the La Follette School of Public Affairs. Practically half my staff graduated from this school — including my chief of staff, Susan Goodwin.”
The La Follette School has produced more than 1,000 graduates and offered degrees in public affairs since 1969, when it was the Center for the Study of Public Policy and Administration. It became the La Follette Institute of Public Affairs in 1984 and later became a school.
“The La Follette School has a proud history,” Doyle said, of graduating alumni who use their expertise “to take on the problems of the nation and the world.”
The governor praised the school for helping the University of Wisconsin-Madison practice the Wisconsin Idea, the recognition that the boundaries of the university extend throughout the state and beyond. “The Wisconsin Idea is manifested here in the La Follette School — where, through many courses, students are already helping state and local leaders analyze issues and make key decisions on how to address them.”
La Follette School students contribute their skills and experience in myriad ways: during internships and jobs, via project assistantships and through research conducted during coursework.
“La Follette School graduates have practical experience in providing useful advice to real-world clients,” Associate Director Melanie Manion said to graduates and their families and friends. “Most of them acquire this experience in the final semester workshop, where they work in teams, under time pressure, to produce an analytical report with policy recommendations.”
This spring, students analyzed the possible effects of a City of Milwaukee sales tax; the City of Madison’s permitting process; the ramifications of Wisconsin’s aging population on long-term health care; Wisconsin’s manufacturing machinery and equipment tax exemption; the end of the South Asia Multi-Fiber Arrangement; partnerships between metropolitan governments and non-governmental organizations; and ways to reduce sexual harassment and discrimination within the Mexico City Police Department.
At the graduation, the school recognized the achievements of two international affairs students. David Zanni received the Penniman Prize for the best student paper of the year, and Bill Schmitt received a Director’s Book Award for highest student achievement. Hilary Shager, a master of public affairs student, also received a Director’s Book Award. Schmitt was one of two student speakers at the program, which La Follette School students organize. Sam Wayne spoke for the master of public affairs students.
Forty-nine students were to have completed their master’s degrees in May or August 2005. Nineteen were in the master of international public affairs program; the rest were in the master of public affairs program. Three students were to receive dual degrees with the Law School. Seven others entered the La Follette School via the accelerated program through which an undergraduate completes a master’s degree with an additional year of study.
Drawing from a series of Chinese sayings, Manion encouraged students to carefully define policy problems and to be comprehensive in their approach to constructing policy alternatives.
“Graduates have a responsibility to use [their] professional training to contribute to good public policy and good public management,” she said.
She emphasized “the importance of connecting, of communication public affairs advice with the appropriate level and form of analytical argument and evidence.”
“You La Follette School graduates have mastered an arsenal of analytical weapons,” Manion said. “Use them to your best advantage as public affairs professionals.
“Put another way, some things belong in the appendix.”
-- posted June 21, 2005; revised July 22, 2005
La Follette School professors receive grants from UW-Madison center
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| Menzie Chinn | Charles Engel | Clark Miller |
Menzie Chinn, Charles Engel and Clark Miller of the La Follette School are among several professors working on projects that have won grants from the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.Each is participating in a collaborative project that will bring distinguished visitors to campus, hold conferences, advance important research questions, develop critical web and data resources, train graduate students, and share expertise with the businesses, government, and the public of Wisconsin. Each project receives a total of $125,000 for three years.
Chinn and Engel are running “Current Account Sustainability in Developed Economies: New Paradigms and Evidence.” Current account sustainability refers to the ability of an economy to sustain large current account deficits during prolonged periods. When deficits become unsustainable, the country defaults on its external debt obligations (explicitly or perhaps by reducing the real value of its debt through inflation if the debt is denominated in the borrowing country’s currency). This project will undertake a theoretical and empirical investigation of current account sustainability as it pertains to the major economies of the world (“the G-5”), and in particular the United States. This research will help determine how the following factors influence sustainability: productivity growth, population growth, government finances, business cycles, monetary policy and exchange-rate movements.
With Jeremi Suri of the history department, Leigh Payne of political science and Jonathan Patz of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and the Department of Population Health Sciences, Miller is serving as principal investigator for the second collaborative entitled “Governing Global Insecurities.” This collaborative focuses on new insecurities the process of globalization has created for states and societies, with special emphasis on the globalization of violence and the globalization of ecological risk. The project will examine a series of case studies from different parts of the world that capture the salient connections between globalization and contemporary insecurity, as well as promising attempts to address these concerns.
The third collaborative investigates “Technology Entrepreneurship & Institutions: Contemporary Issues and International Insights” and leverages expertise housed in the Initiative for Studies in Technology Entrepreneurship and the Agricultural and Applied Economics department.
More than 15 additional faculty members from across the university already have signed on to participate in these projects in various capacities, more than three graduate students each year will be provided project assistantships, and the research and related activities of the collaboratives will build on the expertise of all UW-Madison area studies centers.-- posted June 21, 2005
Forum on taxpayer bill of rights features La Follette professor
The La Follette School's Andrew Reschovsky, joined Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance's Todd Barry and Wisconsin Council on Children & Families' John Keckhaver on Monday, June 13, to talk about proposals for a taxpayer bill of rights, an amendment to the state constitution to limit government taxing and spending.-- posted June 14, 2005
Students see Hillary Rodham Clinton speak; one earns internship
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| La Follette School students (standing, from left) Katie Maguire, Amy Whitehead and Melody Sakazaki stopped with Hillary Rodham Clinton at the annual Wisconsin Women in Government banquet in April. |
Five La Follette School students listened to U.S. Senator and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton speak at Wisconsin Women in Government's 18th annual scholarship recognition dinner, thanks to Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. sharing its table.La Follette School student Melissa Schmidt was among those being recognized. The Wisconsin Legislative Council selected her to receive the Bonnie Reese internship this year. Schmidt just completed her third year of earning a dual degree in public affairs and law.
Schmidt's career goal to become a prosecutor builds on her experiences with the district attorney's offices in Rock and Jefferson counties. In fall 2004, she was a La Follette School project assistant with the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission. In the spring, she researched Dane County's criminal justice system and sentencing process for law professor Michael Smith. For the Legislative Council, Schmidt conducted legal research and analysis in response to questions from legislators.
Funded by WWIG, the Reese internship rotates annually among the Legislative Council and the three other legislative service agencies, the Fiscal, Audit and Reference bureaus. Reese was the first woman to lead a legislative service agency in Wisconsin and was an early director of the council.
Clinton calls for ongoing gender effort, April 30, 2005, Wisconsin State Journal
Political rock star, April 30, 2005, The Capital Times
I'm here for Hillary, April 30, 2005, The Capital Times-- posted June 14, 2005