Public Policy Students Talk about Their Internship Experiences

2007 Intern
As a senior at Duke, I finished up my Public Policy Studies core requirements with PPS 114 in which we looked at the process of formulating and implementing policies. We were given the freedom to choose a topic of interest about which we would write a series of memos throughout the semester. The memos were meant to be a persuasive attempt to gain support for your cause. I chose to write my memos in favor of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. I then had the difficult task of demonstrating the importance of the arts in our society and why they deserve funding from the federal government. 

However, my incredible internship at an art museum significantly enhanced my passion for the topic and my ability to apply my arguments to realistic settings. As I was writing for the class, I was simultaneously experiencing firsthand the wonderful ways nonprofit art organizations put their funding to use. The personal testimony and practical examples I was able to add to my PPS 114 memos only made them stronger and they became more than just another class assignment. 

2006 Intern
My role as an intern provided me the opportunity to exercise the research and writing skills I had learned in both Intro to Public Policy (PPS 55) and Political Analysis in Public Policy Making (PPS 114). Much of my day-to-day work consisted of using online databases such as EBSCO and PubMed. I wrote abstracts summarizing research articles to help the analysts determine whether or not a certain article should be included in a given paper. I drew heavily on my experience in memo writing from PPS 55, as these summaries required that I discern the most important parts of each article and report them in the most concise language possible.

In Public Policy 114, Professor Bruce Jentleson drills into his students the idea that policymakers are not just politicians. The private sector, nonprofits, and others play vital roles in how politicians ultimately vote, and justify their votes, for legislation.

I now realize that the broad knowledge base afforded me by the core classes and prerequisites of the Public Policy major that prepared me for this internship has also prepared me for any job in the policy world, and that there are a whole world of them to choose from.

2006 Intern
As a part of my internship, I was involved in updating an extensive database of research briefs on a variety of child well-being indicators. The databank includes indicators on everything from teen pregnancy, to bicycle helmet use, to science proficiency scores. For each indicator, the quantitative data is broken down by child demographics, including but not limited to age, grade, gender, race, parents’ education level, and poverty level. 

Having had the background of the Ethnicity and Context course, it was very interesting to see how outcomes across these indicators varied differently for and among minority students.  Engaging in deep statistical analysis and dealing very directly with the numbers in various longitudinal studies made these disparities clear. I found from discussions in my child policy course that often issues of education and economics for minority children are marked down to chance and circumstance by those skeptical of the role of discrimination and injustice in creating such disparities. However, as I reviewed each of the 80-plus indicators and witnessed the same trends time and again, it was undeniable to me (as I had held all along) that some other issues besides “chance” were at play.

2006 Intern
Looking at development issues through the lens of the small town property owner, the line that stuck with me most was “we like our town just the way it is.” This statement raises many of the questions that I had discussed just months before in PPS 116. The course stressed that individuals should have the right to make their own unencumbered decisions and should decide for themselves “what the good life is.”

At the outset it seemed easy to make a case for the developer who had played by the rules, offered a quality and affordable product, and would help increase water and sewer allocation in the area. Just a week or two later I found myself more easily making a case for the adjacent property owners.

At the start of my internship I would have guessed that PPS 116 would have had the least overlap with my job. However, as it turned out, Professor Noah Pickus’ assigned readings and discussions on what constitutes the good life and who should decide what the good life is remained utmost in my thinking. The practical side of memo writing in PPS 55 certainly came in handy as did the background of the U.S. political system and concepts such as red tape, groupthink, and sound policy that were taught in PPS 114. Public policy is not only a diverse field of study but also a practical one that can be applied and have great influence in business, law, government, and a variety of other sectors.

2003 Intern
The culmination of my PPS studies, particularly in regards to policy analysis, macroeconomic issues (PPS 55) and ethical issues (PPS 116), was crystallized in the building of my professional relationship with the firm’s president. My experience not only forced me to utilize the skills that I had developed in past PPS classes, but also taught me broader applied concepts such as running a business, expanding a client pool and institutional credibility and maintaining a standard of professionalism and ethics.

Sanford Building
Sanford Building