Pardee RAND Awards Funding for Internships

April 20, 2015

It is always exciting to see our students put their knowledge to work outside of RAND and experience what it's like to work in organizations in their fields of interest. To that end, Pardee RAND is happy to announce funding for three external fellowships.

Sidney Stern Memorial Trust External Fellowship 2015

Melody Harvey has been awarded the first Sidney Stern Memorial Trust External Fellowship to support her internship at MercyCorps Northwest. Melody will spend four weeks from June 22 to July 17, 2015, working in Portland, Oregon. There she will evaluate the design and impact of a program to encourage low-income residents of the Mill Park/Hazelwood neighborhood to build equity and improve their financial resilience through small, incremental monthly direct investments into community-owned, neighborhood-based commercial property.

The work supported by the Stern Memorial Fellowship will form the basis for part of her dissertation and will also prepare her for her career aspiration to be a policy researcher for a think tank or a government entity responsible for financial policy and financial empowerment of low-income individuals in the United States.

The grant to support this External Fellowship was given to Pardee RAND in memory of Betty and Marvin Hoffenberg. Marvin worked at RAND as an economist in the 1950s, and he and Betty remained connected to and supporters of RAND throughout their lives. These funds are designed to encourage and support internship opportunities for Pardee RAND students within the United States.

Support for Two Additional External Fellowships

We received a number of proposals worthy of funding, and thanks to our generous donors were able to identify funds to support two additional internships.

Clinton Saloga will receive funding from the James Q. Wilson Dissertation Award to support his internship from early June through mid-July 2015 with the Council for Responsible Cannabis Regulation in Denver, Colorado. This organization works with lawmakers around the country and the world to discuss and inform them about responsible cannabis regulation.

Clinton's internship will allow him to obtain a deeper understanding about marijuana consumption patterns in Colorado and will contribute to his dissertation, which deals with the impact of marijuana legalization on other markets.

Therese Jones will receive funding from the Rothenberg Dissertation Award to support her internship with the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs in Vienna, Austria, for three months from September to November 2015 to pursue research in international space policy and law related to her dissertation.

Therese's dissertation topic is “Regulating [Space] Flight: Establishing Predictive Benchmarks for the Creation of Dynamic Spaceflight Legislation through a Historical and Organizational Analysis of Aviation Regulation.” UNOOSA houses many of the world’s space law experts, who she hopes will be able to provide her guidance on the foundations and trajectory of international space law and norms.