(The IRC is offering a scholarship opportunity to area students, though eligibility is restricted to undergrads at one of our ten member schools, please see requirements below.)
The International Relations Council (IRC) is pleased to announce the Todd E. Davis Scholarship. This $1,000 scholarship has been funded from the death benefits of Todd E. Davis. Mr. Davis was killed in Iraq on an Army combat mission in January 2008. Todd was the nephew of Dorothy and Ralph Ochsner. Dorothy, a long time IRC member and friend, passed away in June 2009.
This scholarship will be awarded to a current student at one of IRC’s Educational Organizational members at the 2009 Eliot S. Berkley Lecture on December 4, 2009.
The requirements are:
Full-time undergraduate student at one of these schools: Avila University, Baker University, Johnson County Community College, Park University, University of Kansas, UMKC, UMKC Bloch School, University of St. Mary, Rockhurst University, or William Jewell College.
A cover letter expressing interest in the Todd E. Davis Scholarship.
A letter of recommendation from a professor, to be sent directly to the IRC, that attests to the candidate's interest in global affairs, the promise of excellence in the study of global affairs, and any impressive leadership by the candidate in creating a globally-engaged community.
Submission of a 3-5 page essay on one of the following topics:
The Nobel Peace Prize selection committee has requested that you nominate a candidate for its 2010 competition. In the award guidelines, they stipulate that the ideal candidate will be an individual “who expresses his/her knowledge of crises, conflicts and the importance of peaceful paths to resolutions.”
One of the toughest problems the Obama Administration faces is how to define “success” in Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan. Give your advice.
The deadline for submissions is: Friday, November 13.
The applications will be evaluated by the staff of the International Relations Council.
Please send application materials to:
Linda S. Trout, Executive Director, at ltrout@irckc.org
Or: International Relations Council
As a lead up to our Dec.4th Berkley Lecture from Dr. Allison Stanger, author of One Nation Under Contract, we will examine a few issues likely to be raised in the book and in her lecture to the IRC.
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) recently introduced an amendment, passed by the Senate on Oct. 6th, to the Defense Appropriations Act which was intended:
"To prohibit the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims."
The amendment name-checked Halliburton and KBR in response to the case of Jamie Lee Jones, a former KBR employee who claims she was attacked and raped by several of her coworkers while working in Iraq in 2005. According to Jones, after she reported the incident to her employers, she was locked in a shipping container for 24 hours. KBR threatened Jones's job, took no action to punish her attackers, and then maintained that the attack should be addressed through arbitration. Jones consented to arbitration upon her employment at KBR, as is standard procedure in many private companies, agreeing not to sue the company if she was injured in work-related activities. In contrast to a trial, arbitration is legally binding, but produces no public record and is conducted with no judge or jury. Under the arbitration agreement, Jones could not sue the company for her treatment, and could not appeal if she lost her case. KBR claimed that Jones' assault was work-related and fell under her arbitration agreement. This takes some mental gymnastics-- KBR was arguing that Jones should have expected to be gang-raped and imprisoned by her coworkers as a normal workplace risk. One assumes that KBR feels this way about all of their female employees.
Thanks to a decision earlier this month from the US Court of Appeals, after three years of legislation Jones can finally sue KBR for her treatment. The implications of her case and the Senate amendment are far-reaching. First, her case highlights the disadvantages of mandatory arbitration. Private companies have long asked employees and customers to agree to mandatory arbitration in dealing with disputes, a practice that many argue heavily favors the private company. In arbitration, it was possible that Jones would be victimized a second time by being stripped of her right to face her attackers in open court, and then probably fired while her attackers escaped punishment.
Second, it shows how little accountability these contracting companies currently have. 30 US Senators voted against an amendment that punishes government-funded companies for condoning something as reprehensible as rape. Contractors take billions of tax dollars to spend with relative freedom, yet refuse to abide by the provision that they allow employees to press charges if they are raped on the job.
There's a rather unfortunate local connection to the story. Both Kansas senators (Brownback and Roberts) and one Missouri senator (Bond) were among the thirty Senators who voted against the amendment, claiming that the amendment unfairly targeted KBR and Halliburton. Proponents of the amendment pointed out that the bill will apply to all government contracting agencies in the future. Many of these thirty senators also seemingly contradicted themselves after calling for the de-funding of ACORN, which formerly received federal funding to help low-income individuals but now stands accused of fraud. Critics point out the two opposing ideas that these Senators seem to hold in their head simultaneously: one, that companies who take government money should hold up to the highest level of scrutiny; the other, that the government should take a hands-off approach to such companies even when faced when evidence of gang-rape:
Unfortunately for Jones and for any female employees of KBR or other government contractors, the amendment may still not go through. Senator Dan Inouye (D-HI) may remove the amendment thanks to continued pressure from defense contractors.
To register to attend the Berkley Lecture on Dec. 4th, please visit the IRC website.
So, you’ve decided to pursue a Master’s degree. You’ve decided to surrender your freedom and $60,000 for the privilege of enduring marathon classes, all-night study sessions, and cutthroat competition from your fellow students, with no guarantee that your new degree will help you get a job once you graduate.
Hooray!
Because you really, really want to earn a graduate degree and are willing to take on all of the accompanying burdens, right?
Right?
Any grad school application guide begins the same way: by attempting to dissuade you from applying. Would you be able to give up your social life for years at a time? Do you mind parting with enough cash that you could have bought a car, or maybe even a house with? The decision is harder if you’ve already started a family. Will you mind if your young children start calling the babysitter “Mommy?” If all this gives you pause, that’s good. It should.
I’ve considered these questions myself. The decision to apply was easier for me, because I have no family to traumatize with my perpetual absence and a good fifty years left on my life expectancy to pay off the debt. Because the unemployment rate is still so high, the opportunity cost (the money I could be making working instead of studying) is probably as low as it will ever be. I also am not so far from undergrad that study habits have atrophied. Plus, as we all know from the first entry in this series, it’s not like there are any other opportunities to seize on right now.
I’m ready to apply, and no doomsday prophecies will sway me. So, where to start? First, I have to make sure that my basic, universal requirements for applications are fulfilled.
1. Did I graduate from undergrad? It seems like a dumb question (“Duh, could l have all this post-grad angst without graduating?”) but schools are going to need proof of such, usually in the form of your transcript. You are going to need several copies of your transcript for even one application. Send off to your undergrad’s registrar and get a few official transcripts. Get an extra one that you can tear out of its envelope, photocopy, and use for “unofficial” purposes, such as multiple copies in the same application packages.
2. Take those standardized tests. For my purposes (international relations), I will need to take the GRE, however, other tests are often required or accepted. Business schools are usually looking for the GMAT, law school for the LSAT, and so on. The debate over standardized tests and their ability to measure academic aptitude has been debated as long as they have been in use, and I won’t spend any time rehashing the controversy here. The fact is you have to take one. Preparation can help ease anxiety and sometimes even raise your score. Companies that offer test prep books, software, and classes are Kaplan and the Princeton Review (full disclosure: I work part-time as an ACT teacher for the Princeton Review). I have yet to take the GRE officially myself; when I do I will cover preparation and test-taking strategies in a separate post.
3. Assess how much cash you are willing to part with and how much debt you are able to take on in pursuing the degree. Look at your assets, your savings, and your current debts. Take stock of the money you have RIGHT NOW—don’t be distracted by your future possible earnings, financial aid, or sudden lottery jackpots. Those are all imaginary at the moment and may never materialize. Be brutally honest with yourself. Once you have that number, write it down, stick it in a drawer, and forget about it for a while. Later in the application process, when you start receiving acceptance letters from universities (let’s pray) you can pull out that number and compare them to the schools’ tuition rate and their offered financial aid. If you come up with an accurate assessment of how much you can afford before applying, you have less chance of having stars in your eyes once the acceptance letters roll in.
4. Justify your existence. Make a list accounting for your whereabouts and occupation for past 5-10 years. For most people, this would be a resume. Be prepared to explain what you were doing, how much you earned doing it, and what skills/experience you picked up along the way. Don’t lie or even over-embellish, but put the best face forward that you can. Your grad program will want to know not only what you want to study, but what assets you will bring to the school. Your resume and work experience says a lot about your motivation, your stability, and your future potential. Be sure to account for periods of inactivity: were you traveling? Writing a novel? Taking care of your sick mother? If you don’t address these gaps, admissions committees can assume the worst.
5. Google yourself. Google your name and all nicknames/aliases/screen names you have used in the past. Do you like what you see in the results? Does your Facebook/MySpace/Twitter page come up? Do you WANT it to? Be sure that all your pages’ privacy settings only allow your friends to view them. Check for photos of yourself posted by friends that may be shared. Consider cleaning up your online presence, or better yet, keep it clean to start with. Don’t overshare or brag about your illegal activities. Even if you delete something incriminating, it could linger in archives or in other people’s files and still surface at inconvenient times. A good rule of thumb: if you would feel uncomfortable shouting out some piece of information in Time Square, in front of foreign tourists, the NYPD, people of all races, all your exes and your future spouse, your grandmother, your children, and the twitchy guy on the corner who may or may not be a serial killer, then DON’T post it online.
To build up positive results about yourself, you will have to put the content out there yourself. Consider using your website, Facebook, or Twitter to promote yourself and your accomplishments. Work for a reputation as an expert in your chosen field: review books about your field of study, write your thoughts on current events in your industry, post a portfolio of your work. Start on this early. The longer you put out positive content, the more likely it will be to outweigh anything incriminating or unflattering out there.
6. Think about who might recommend you for a grad program. Two types of references are essential: one, a professor from your undergrad to attest to your academic accomplishments; second, a work superior who has known you a while and can vouch for your work habits and enthusiasm for your chosen field. Avoid using family members (even if you’ve worked for them) and friends or work peers. Committees just aren’t going to take this type of recommendation seriously.
Also avoid falling into the trap of going for prestigious references over ones from people who really know you. For example, if you interned for Microsoft, it is better to get a personal, detailed letter from the office manager you worked with every day than a mass-produced form letter from Bill Gates. Admissions committees can spot a form letter a mile away, and you risk looking phony.
Getting good references isn’t something that you can throw together in a few days. Typically you will need to maintain a good relationship with mentors, teachers, and bosses for years. Get started early, ideally in undergrad or earlier. Don’t burn bridges or let relationships falter even after you’ve left school or a job. When you do need a reference, it will be easier to reconnect.
Grad school applications’ exact requirements will vary, but these are some basics that most all schools will require. Start pulling these materials together as soon as possible to avoid being caught up against deadlines. In coming posts, I will cover each of these points and more of the admissions process in more depth.
What preparations for grad school would you recommend? How soon should someone start preparing? Answer in the comments of the blog, on Facebook, or in LinkedIn.
(Update: Please see the bottom of the post for a link to The Boston Globe review of One Nation Under Contract.)
The 2009 Berkley Lecture will be given this year by Dr. Allison Stanger, Russell Leng Professor of International Politics and Economics and Director of the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs at Middlebury College.
From Stanger's biography at Middlebury's website:
"Stanger received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. She also holds an A.M. in Regional Studies-Soviet Union (Harvard), a graduate diploma in Economics (London School of Economics), and a B.S. in Actuarial Science/Mathematics (Ball State University). She has studied foreign languages and literature at Charles University (Prague), the Sorbonne (Paris), and the Pushkin Institute (Moscow)."
Stanger is now a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Academic Leadership Council of Business for Diplomatic Action. Her op/eds and essays have been widely published. Recently, US News and World Report published a piece that is likely a good preview of her Dec. 4th lecture. She argues that after the end of the Cold War intelligence agencies fell into complacency, only to be shocked back into action by 9/11. Unfortunately, government agencies no longer maintained the manpower and budgets that they had commanded during the Cold War. To meet the demand, private companies were offered government contracts, sometimes worth billions, to handle intelligence and military affairs on behalf of the United States. Private companies, however, are motivated by profit. Allegations have surfaced of widespread contract fraud and misconduct by these companies-- everything from charging the US government for feeding nonexistent soldiers in Iraq to torturing suspected terrorists. Spending records from the State and Defense Departments show that expenditures have multiplied several times over as they turn duties over to contractors. What is less clear, however, is the effect on the CIA in the years since 9/11:
"Since CIA contracts fall outside normal licensing protocols and the agency's budget is classified, it had been relatively easy to keep these issues out of the public eye. The change in administration has loosened tongues, however, and a window has been opened on what is in reality a transformed intelligence community."
One Nation Under Contract was released on Oct 12th. To register to attend the Berkley Lecture (Dec. 4th at the Marriott downtown) please see the IRC website.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's upcoming address on his visit to Cuba, first announced by IRC executive director Linda Trout at our Awards Banquet, now has a location.
Cleaver's speech is called Cuba Today: Reflections on My Visit. The IRC will host the event at Rockhurst University Science Center (1100 Rockhurst Road, Kansas City, MO, 64110Room 115, on Nov. 10th, 2009 at 7:30 PM.
My December 2008 graduation, rather than a mortarboard tossing, silly-string coated affair, was grim. The ceremony took place on a bitterly blustery grey day. Black-clad graduates herded silently to their chairs as a tinny “Pomp and Circumstance” piped in over the gym's sound system. The keynote speech drifted from the promise of youth to George Washington Carver to something about a man jumping out of a plane with a backpack full of silverware. "Are we the jumper?" I remember thinking. No one mentioned the crushing recession in progress in the world outside that wood-floored gym, the near-nil chance that many of us had of finding work in the coming months, the decades’ worth of student loan debt that we 22 year-olds now had to bear in such an environment. No one mentioned these things, but no one was reading aloud Oh, the Places You’ll Go! either.
I’m being dramatic, of course.But no more dramatic than the daily news at that time. Two months prior, the world economy had bottomed out, leaving predictions of mass unemployment, investments flatlining, a new Great Depression. Overnight we were stuck with the fallout of years of corruption and mismanagement from our elders in finances and government. Younger undergrads had years left to wait out this recession. Our slightly older peers who had graduated a few years before us had work experience to put on their resume.We were just 500 kids with liberal arts degrees.No wonder we were glum. At that ceremony my only moment of happiness came when the dean correctly pronounced my name handing me my diploma. Without a job, my plans for moving somewhere cosmopolitan and vibrant, living alone without roommates, and laying the foundations for a career were out of the question. I moved back into my bedroom in my parents’ house, which they accommodated wonderfully but signaled to me a regression to my (shudder) high school days. I applied to hundreds of jobs, first in government and international relations, then any sort of office job, and finally jobs waiting tables and in retail. I couldn’t even get an interview. I ended up working as a waitress at a restaurant downtown. This was fine at first but as the recession continued the restaurant was so strapped that the kitchen couldn’t afford soap for the dishwasher. Management couldn't make payroll for months at a time. In the fall of this year, I decided to quit and become a “professional intern” for the International Relations Council and a local politician in hopes of gaining a little work experience and maybe a modicum of self-worth.
But these are stopgap measures. Almost one year after graduation, the economy is recovering but employment rates are not. I enjoy my work as an IRC intern but still can’t find what most would call a “real” job. Luckily I have my family to lean on, and no one to support financially as millions of other unemployed workers do. Times are tough everywhere, and we're all trying to figure out how to cope. I can manage this way for a long time. And yet, the recession and accompanying high unemployment rates will continue for years. Already, all this time spent looking for work and making do with what I can find is time that could have been invested in a career track that might allow me to become a diplomat, or a foreign service officer, or to work overseas as I wished. That time is lost, but I don’t want to spend what’s left of my youth waiting and cursing forces beyond my control.
That's why I'm trying something different this fall: I’m applying to graduate school to study international relations. I will blog here at the IRC about the application process, covering picking schools to apply to, graduate school fairs, finances, and standardized tests. Comments, questions and suggestions are welcome (I want to hear your stories!). Stay tuned for more updates on the process, and good luck to everyone out there in these tough times. --From Lucia, your friendly neighborhood IRC intern.
We all had a blast last night at the Awards Banquet! Thanks to all the IRC members who came out to support us!
One announcement made by IRC director Linda Trout at the banquet is the newly scheduled speech from Kansas City's own Emanuel Cleaver, former KC mayor and now Missouri representative in Congress. Cleaver will speak about his recent visit to Cuba and his impressions on the future of the island nation.
Rep. Cleaver will speak on November 10th at 7:30 PM. Other details will follow, stay tuned for more information!
The International Relations Council (IRC) is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, and serves the Greater Kansas City area. IRC is the region's leading organization for world affairs programming for all ages. Since its founding in 1954, IRC has hosted many world leaders, including cabinet level officials, ambassadors and leaders from business, media, politics, government and education. Our members, both individuals and organizations, participate in numerous events throughout the year. IRC also provides significant resources for teachers and schools.
