Olivia Wolf '17

Thanks to their Twin Cities location, Macalester students enjoy a wide variety of internship opportunities. Fall semester three Mac students landed internships in the offices of U.S. senators. Myles Ambrose ’17 (Washington Grove, Md.), Olivia Wolf ’17 (Portland, Ore.), and Logan Hovie ’16 (Neenah, Wis.) are working for Senator Al Franken (Minn.), Senator Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), and Senator Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), respectively.

Logan300.jpgHovie’s experience has been the most intense, given that he is spending 25 hours a week working in Senator Baldwin’s Washington, D.C., office. The political science major—serious about a future in politics—calls the opportunity “a terrific learning experience.” He spends his time reading and answering constituent mail, giving capitol tours, attending policy briefings, and helping other staffers prepare memos on a range of health care topics, including the CDC’s response to Ebola.

During his semester in Washington, Hovie also is taking classes at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies. His term in our nation’s capitol, he says, is in lieu of a semester spent studying abroad.

Ambrose, also a political science major, works in Franken’s St. Paul office, where he, too, answers constituent mail and does legislative research. Although he wasn’t directly involved with Franken’s recent successful reelection campaign, says Hovie, he did experience one of the consequences of that additional exposure, as he helped handle the office’s heavier than usual influx of letters and phone calls.

One of seven interns, Ambrose earns academic credit for working 10 hours a week in Franken’s office. He calls it “a great internship if you’re passionate about politics and want to learn about how legislators interact with their constituents.”

Wolf, doing similar work to Ambrose and Hovie, says she has enjoyed the “significant female presence” in Senator Klobuchar’s staff. The sophomore, still undecided as to a major, has loved “the real world setting,” and working in an office where “women definitely carry a strong voice.”

December 8 2014

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