Nebraska Wesleyan University students in the Capitol Hill Internship Program are finishing their Washington D.C experiences this week.
This semester’s participants faced challenges that previous CHIP students haven’t faced. The government shutdown left some Nebraska Wesleyan students out of work. Without work, the students were unable to earn their intended credits.
Students who participate in CHIP must intern for 35 hours a week for 15 weeks to receive full internship credit for the program. With the shutdown lasting longer than a week, NWU’s Global Studies Program quickly prepared alternatives for the students to obtain credits.
Three of the students affected by the shutdown took different approaches to earning credits. One student volunteered through community service. Another spent time researching at Georgetown University Library. Another student attended events and assisted another unaffected CHIP intern with extra work. Additionally each student put in extra time at their organization, working evenings and weekends.
Work resumed very quickly after the end of the shutdown,” said Miranda Baxter, a senior from Grand Island. “My lab lost a lot of the time it needed to work on an important presentation due to the shutdown, so what once was a comfortably-paced effort to get everything done became a rush to finish the essentials."
"After the presentation's completion though," she added, "things have largely returned to normal, with the addition of more than a few shutdown jokes circulating the halls.”
Luckily the shutdown didn’t last long enough to force students home without finishing their projects and earning their credits.