SMU students to spend summer as public service interns

Seven SMU students have been named Maguire and Irby Family Public Service Interns, earning positions in a 14-year-old program that provides summer stipends for public service volunteer work and research.

The interns will work in a variety of programs as far away as Angola and Nicaragua, and as close as Austin and Dallas.  The program, sponsored by the Cary M. Maguire Center for Public Ethics and the Irby Family Foundation, has supported volunteers in 13 states, and 11 countries outside the USA and in more than 100 agencies in Texas. 

“We approved grants for more international internships this year than last and continue to see more proposals from graduate students,” said Thomas Mayo, Maguire Center director.  “The graduate students, in particular, clearly see these internships as an opportunity to use their advanced studies in a new, nonprofit context that benefits the communities where they will serve. All the students, though, will have potentially life-altering experiences, and the Maguire Center is pleased to help make that happen.”

The 2010 interns are:

• Shay Cannedy, an anthropology graduate student in Dedman College, will work with the Green Leaf Program at Refugee Services of Texas Inc. in Austin to develop marriage education classes and help develop a program evaluation system.
     
• John Duvenci, a combined undergraduate/graduate student in the Lyle School of Engineering, will work with Living Water International in Luanda, Angola, to develop a water treatment system for an orphanage.
     
• Kendra Eaton, a junior majoring in Markets and Culture in Dedman College, will work with Fundacion A. Jean Brugger in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, tutoring students in English and teaching both art appreciation for children and workshops to help enhance local residents’ computer skills.
     
• Lisa Haayen, a Ph.D. student in cultural anthropology in Dedman College, will compare student retention rates and outcomes at two Vickery Meadows Learning Center sites in West Dallas.
  
• Anders Pedersen, a junior majoring in Markets and Culture in Dedman College, will go to northern Uganda to work with Elephant Sisters, a fair trade art cooperative, to help build low-cost homes, counsel former child soldiers and teach basic English language skills to children.
     
• Sheba Rasson, a junior psychology and business major, will work in Dallas at Legal Hospice of Texas on client orientation materials and registrations, and will assist with research and preparation of legal documents.
     
• Ablat Turson, a Ph.D. student in biology in Dedman College, will work at International Students Inc. to pair the needs of international students studying at Dallas universities with potential resource-delivery systems.

Applications for Public Service Internships are posted by the Maguire Center in late fall and the submission deadline is usually early February.

The Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility is a university-wide center that supports student and faculty ethics-related education and activities, as well as community outreach to private and public institutions in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The center was funded by an endowment of $2.5 million from its namesake in 1995.

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A private university located in the heart of Dallas, SMU is building on the vision of its founders, who imagined a distinguished center for learning emerging from the spirit of the city.  Today, nearly 11,000 students benefit from the national opportunities and international reach afforded by the quality of SMU’s seven degree-granting schools.