The Summer 2009 Michigan International Internship and Service Program Participants - At a Glance

MIISP '09 Participants

Note: The participant's level of study indiciated in this entry is his/her current U-M status as of Fall 2009.

Erica Buher (Blog Title: oh to live among the peacocks!)

• Junior, LSA, Concentration in International Studies and African Studies
• Internship: Spent the summer in Uganda working at a NGO called REAP (Renewed Effords to Alleviate Poverty), which focuses on issues related to human rights, the environment and HIV/AIDS

Christie Donahue (Blog Title: Cricketd's Travels)

• Senior, College of Engineering, Concentration in Biomedical Engineering
• Internship: Working in Antigua, Guatemala at Casasito, an NGO with which she first became involved through the UM student organization Health in Action.

Robin Goldberg (Blog Title: Aventuras en Argentina)

• Senior, LSA/Residential College, Concentration in Arts & Ideas in the Humanities
• Internship: Spent last summer in Cordoba, Argentina where she taught English at a local school.

Ramsey Hilton (Blog Title: Ramsey in Deutschland)

• Senior, College of Engineering, Concentration in Chemical Engineering
• Internship: Spent the summer working at BMW in Munich, Germany.

Lauren Lockwood (Blog Title: Lauren in Zurich)

• Senior, LSA, Concentration in Brain, Behavior, and Cognitive Science
• Internship: Spent the summer working in the Dermatology Department at the University of Zuerich in Switzerland where she attended professional conferences, edited cutting edge research papers, and participated in clinical observations.

Carl Patchen (Blog Title: Carl in Buenos Aires)

• Junior, Ford School of Public Policy
• Internship: Spent the summer in Buenos Aires, Argentina working at La Usina, which he describes as "a nonprofit organization that works to promote social justice for people with disabilities in Argentina by launching awareness campaigns and promoting similar programs" There Carl worked to find funding opportunities to support various La Usina initiatives.

Mark Rudolf (Blog Title: Mark im Vaterland)

• Sophomore, College of Engineering, Concentration in Biomedical Engineering
• Internship: Spent the summer working in the Department of Biohybrid Systems at the Fraunhofer Institute of Biomedical Technology in St. Ingbert, Germany.

Priscilla Tan (Blog Title: Priscilla in Istanbul)

• Sophomore, LSA
• Internship: Spent the summer in Istanbul, Turkey where she had two internships, the first of which was at FIBA Real Estate, and the second was at the International Office at a local Turkish university.

Sun Young (Lyla) Yang (Blog Title: my little sunshine)

• Sophomore, Stephen M. Ross School of Business
• Internship: Spent last summer pursuing three international opportunities including the Pangea World Service Team's trip to Ecuador in May, the Quito Project (also in Ecuador) during the month of June, and then GIEU in Cuzco, Peru during the month of July.

Kira Youryevna Youdina (Blog Title: Kira in St. Petersburg)

• Junior, LSA, Concentration in Political Science and History.
• Internship: Spent this summer in St. Petersburg, Russia at an internship with the Hermitage Museum.

Welcome!

Hello, IISPers!

Welcome to the centralized Michigan International Internship and Service-learning Program blog. You'll recall that as participants in IISP, it is a requirement that you will maintain a blog throughout your summer internship/service-learning experience. We chose Blogger as the host site, as many students are already familiar with it (and may even have a pre-existing blog), and also because it's user-friendly and therefore easily customizable. The IISP Summer 2009 blog will act as the site that binds all of your separate blogs together. We will ask you all to send us the URL to your blog, so that we can add the link to our blog list. This will display links to your individual blogs on the right-hand side of this main IISP blog (See example of a linked blog "Molly in Beijing"). Linking to our blog, rather than everyone posting onto one single blog, will allow you all to customize your sites as you wish while making it easier to follow your stories!

We acknowledge that you might not have regular internet access or the time to write daily entries, so we're asking each of you to write at least one blog entry per week while abroad, including a post written before you leave and another after your arrive back home. We hope that this will be enjoyable and ultimately very rewarding as it is a great way to document your thoughts and reactions to what you're going through.

In terms of the content, we'd like to give you considerable freedom to write as you wish, but we'd ask you to reflect on interesting experiences that you're having while abroad, what you're learning, differences in the workplace, etc.

Even though you may not be leaving for a while, we would like you all to create your account before our last meeting (Thursday, April 9th) so that we'll have your site linked to ours. It'll be one less thing you'll have to worry about the night before you leave! For those of you who have a Google account, your Gmail log-in doubles as a Blogger log-in as well!

Thank you - if you have any questions about the blogging requirement, please let us know!

Bill and Kelly