Matthew Zmudka ’11 witnesses an environmental rights protest in Copenhagen

During his semester abroad in Copenhagen, Matthew Zmudka ’11 witnesses this environmental rights protest at the UN Climate Change Summit.

Photographer: 
Matthew Zmudka ‘11
Jake Joseph '11 interning with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

From Jake Joseph '11 (center): I am working for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Institute for Welcoming Resources, made possible by a Grinnell-Lilly grant through the Career Development Office. The institute is the central point of what is called the welcoming church movement. We work as an ecumenical and interfaith organization for full inclusion and participation of LGBTQ individuals within their religious institutions. I help organize our role in the many conferences around the country, and I have a role in social media outreach, logistics, and have been given specific parts of the conferences to lead on my own. This is an important summer for our movement and organization, and thanks to Grinnell College and the CDO, I can say, "I was there and active in making real change in an important area!"

Courtesy of Sylvia Thorson-Smith

Grinnell students don’t just want to learn about the world—they want to change it for the better. With one of the core values of Grinnell being social responsibility, Grinnell students are involved in multiple activities on and off campus that demonstrate their engagement with the rest of the globe.

Many of the off-campus study programs offer internships or volunteer activities for students, letting them teach English in Ecuador, for example, or assist the elderly in a French nursing home. The Rosenfield Program and the Global Development Studies Concentration, among other programs, fund summer internships abroad, so that students can do things like work in a perinatal HIV research unit in Soweto, South Africa, or do fieldwork on biodiversity in Western China.

But you don’t need to leave campus to be involved in world events. The Center for International Studies and the Rosenfield Program bring global leaders to campus to meet with and teach Grinnell students. And groups like the Social Justice Action Group or Save the Planet work on campus to address global concerns like poverty or environmental degradation.

Grinnell provides its graduates with a wealth of opportunities to use their education for the common good. The Grinnell Corps program, modeled on the Peace Corps, funds graduates to do service work for a year in China, Lesotho, Namibia, Thailand, and the United States. Other students have won prestigious awards like the Watson Fellowship or a Fulbright Grant to travel and work outside the United States for a year.

At Grinnell, there are no limits on your ability to explore the world and to work on improving it.

 

 Facts:

• In a recent summer, Grinnell students completed internships in Ecuador, India, China, Costa Rica, Senegal, Sri Lanka, and Bolivia, among other sites.

• Grinnell ranks in the top twenty small colleges and universities for producing Peace Corps volunteers (2008 data).

• Some of the global leaders brought recently to campus by the Rosenfield Program include former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and former President of Costa Rica Oscar Arias.

• Read the blog of Sarah Parker ’07 during her Watson fellowship when she studied “Marimba and Youth Culture in Southern Africa”: