International Affairs Virtual Information Session

OK well it looks.

Like we're starting to get a few folks. Uh, Good afternoon everybody. I'm going to probably stall just a few minutes so that.

We make sure that everybody who wants to participate is online.

Uhm, I hope everyone is well.

It's like we got people from all over Virginia, Maryland. I'm seeing Germany that's exciting.

It's going to wait a few more minutes to make sure seconds, actually, not minutes, just to make sure that we.

That we get folks.

If folks on line price try to pause and say this again.

But for now, just as folks are logging in, just a reminder that you can feel free to type your message on the chat column on the left, and I'll do my best to respond. I got a couple of questions before hand that I'm going to try to work into my presentation.

But In addition to those, any any questions that just come up as we're going through, you can feel free to ask those. I'm also take this time to note the email address that you should be able to see at the bottom of the screen of the PowerPoint.

That's my email address. I am Jason Davidson. The address is j.davidso@uw.edu and then of course you can find that online. In addition, I'll just go ahead and mention that I am because we're on line. Of course I am holding office hours for my regular classes on Skype at Jason William Davidson and I'm holding those Tuesday, Thursdays, 89 and 1:45 to 3:15. But if you want to do any sort of Skype session about international affairs or political science at Mary Washington.

You can always feel free to reach out to me via that.

Uh, via Skype via email and then we can set up a Skype appointment. OK, well, I think what I'm going to do looks like we're up to 12 of the 18 that had RSVP did, so I think I'm going to go ahead and get started, but I'm still going to roll in a little bit easy at the start so that.

If we gain some more participants folks don't miss a ton of important information. The first thing I'll go ahead and do is say just a very brief bit about myself. I know you're not here primarily to hear about me, but just so you have some sense of who I am and why I'm giving this talk. So I am as I said, Jason Davidson. I have been at the University of Mary Washington since fall of 2001.

So quite some time, roughly, I think the time that most of you around the time it must be were born. So it's been awhile. So I've got a pretty good sense of experience with kind of the range of of what we offer students in the range of what our students do, and I'm going to talk about that in a bit.

I do teach both our intro to international relations course, which if you all end up doing the major but maybe even just if you want a good gym general education class that's probably side 102. I teach that every semester.

And then In addition, I most often teach an upper level course called security and conflict studies. And there is we do have at Mary Washington, a minor insecurity and conflict studies. So something to be to be conscious of. That's a little bit about who I am. My research. I won't bore you with, but I do research on alliances and happy to talk about that. If anybody is interested. But that's just a brief sense of who I am and what I do. I have a regional specialization in Western Europe. I guess I'll mention that and then I'll talk about some of the other faculty in just a bit.

But I did want it. One thing that I wanted to address, I'm just going to click on the list of participants here and see.

OK well I'm still gonna go ahead with this 'cause this is how I had thought I would start I gotta question before hand from an apologizing in advance even though she's not here if if I'm mispronouncing it but naija hendron excuse me Herndon.

Who asked which is a great question what really is international affairs in who's it for well international affairs is really just about things in social political economic things that cross borders so if you're interested in economic social political phenomenon that cross borders primarily those movements that are outside of the United States or as the United States relates with countries?

Around the world. That's really what international affairs is. In a nutshell, it's very broad. What it would kind of give you a couple of examples, really briefly, what is it? What is it is? If you're just interested in studying what happens within the United States, that's probably not going to be the major for you. And if you're interested, for example in studying primarily or interested in studying that, I don't know. Let's say Spanish literature, or you're interested primarily in studying Spanish culture or food or art.

Those are really not things that we do in international affairs. We tend to focus more on kind of what I would call the social scientific side of things more broadly. So that would entail politics, social phenomenon, movements, geography. It's going to entail economic. Some talk about the requirements in a second, but just to get a sense of kind of in general. What do we mean by international affairs?

I, uh, heard it also asked this question, which is kind of what is it for? What kind of careers? And we are going to talk about careers today, so I just want to draw your attention to that. We're going to go ahead and get moving.

With the slide show, so hopefully most people are online now and hopefully you can see that.

So just so I'm not going to get bored you to detail on the on the major requirements when I really want to talk about rather than going through all of these specifically, is kind of what are we doing with these major requirements? Well, the big picture idea of what international affairs is and how it's different from just about any other major on campus is that it is a interdisciplinary major, meaning that it covers lots of different kind of traditional majors or traditional disciplines. And it is built that way. It is built to require.

Um students to take courses in lots of different disciplines. So you'll see. Yes there are.

There's some choice built in which is designed to give you more flexibility for your schedules as well as to account for sometimes particular courses by not be offered every single semester. Yes, there is some flexibility, but and there are three required political science courses, then there's a required economics course, either international economics or economic development. There's required history course, two different versions of European diplomatic history. There are two require or there is a Reporter Geography Course where you get a choice.

Either geopolitics for geography and development. So that is designed to say that everybody who majors in international affairs is going to have to take these 3 upper level courses in economics, history and geography In addition to political science. So they're going to have to be acquainted with at least four kind of traditional disciplines that you would study in the social Sciences and what we think is that that's incredibly useful in getting students to see the world from different perspectives, right?

Every discipline, every major on Mary Washington's campus or any other campus they have kind of their own mindset and they have their own way of thinking. And when you're in international affairs major, you're forced to think about the world from these different perspectives. To go through these different kinds of mindsets. If you will and think about the world from those different perspectives. So that's really the thinking behind why we have these different required courses.

So that all said, then we talk about our support courses, and if you're interested in something specific examples of these I might throw out a few here and there, but you can find all of you can find a very detailed list of support courses on our website. You go into young W any type in political science international affairs, and you'll go and there will be a list called support course. It doesn't say major electives. I don't know why it's always been called support courses, so that's the way it's listed, but that's how you find them. If you want a sense.

Hum, the support courses you can mix and match as much as you want across these different disciplines. All you have to take his 7:00 AM so the beauty of that is, let's say we have somebody out there. I'm going to go ahead and take a wild guess. Now we got 15 people online. Somebody out there is interested in the Middle East. If you're interested in the Middle East type type of note in the chat so that I know maybe you're interested in the Middle East. If you're interested, maybe you got somebody out there is interested in Latin America. If you're interested in Latin America as a region, think you might want to study that region, type it in the chat.

Box just so I know who's who's interested in what. But let's say that I take that as an example, let's say Middle East since I started with the Middle East. If you're interested in the Middle East, you can take a geography of the Middle East class with Professor Farhang Roohani in the Geography Department. You can take actually a number of history courses on the Middle East.

With our professor Nabil Optic really down in the History Department, Oh, East Asia, I'll get it. I'll get good Natalie. Interested in Latin America, I'm going to come back to that excellent and Richard interested in East Asia.

In Latin America, excellent, so I'll come to Latin America to you could take political science courses on the Middle East with our Ranjit Singh OK, Latin America excellent since we gotta bunch of Latin America, I'll mention some of those alternatives as well. We've got.

Geography of Latin America and the Caribbean core. Stop by Dawn Bolin. We've got history courses on the history of Latin America. Top by Alison Posca, and then I'm very pleased that we just hired a brand new tenure track. Holy, very excited. Melissa Martinez who's teaching our politics of Latin America courses in political science. She will also be teaching a US in Latin American politics course coming up, and probably will be offering some other courses. Beyond that, I'll say more about her in a second. She's gonna specialization in human rights and.

Um violence in Latin America so.

But the idea is, if you've got this regional interest, you can develop it from the perspective of all these different disciplines. Now, if you don't have a regional interest, that's OK too. 'cause you can dabble around, and that's fine. We certainly there's no requirement that you specialize in a region. I have for example. So I mentioned earlier. For those of you who are here from the beginning that I direct the minor program insecurity and conflict studies. So I will have students who maybe they're interested in multiple regions from the perspective of security.

Other people might be interested. We might have some people that are interested in trade interested, maybe in economic development as broader issues so you could do those at where you're taking some classes in Latin America have taken some classes in East Asia, are taking some classes in Indiana.

Had an. I'm currently are offering with some regularity of course on sub Saharan Africa, on the politics of sub Saharan Africa. So that's another alternative as well. The idea? The whole point that I'm getting at here is that you can take courses from a variety of disciplines, different disciplines, to develop that regional interest, that regional expertise, those include, and I'll say a bit about our language requirement here.

Hum.

So what we recommend most students do is they, which I think some of you might not be able to see I can't really control what of the PowerPoint is coming through on this slide, but option B which is below I think what most of you can see is actually the most commonly chosen option, and that is the take two courses at the 300 level for any language. So for those of you, since we got a lot of people interested in Latin America, that would be 2 Spanish courses at the 300 level.

And that would complete your international affairs. Your special international first language requirement, which is higher than the University requirement in the Richard interested in East Asia, we have Mandarin Chinese, so that would be the same two 300 level Mandarin Chinese classes 300. What is 300 level mean? Thank you. Faith for asking that question so generally.

Right, uh, at University of Mary Washington. If you came in with zero language experience, you would start at, let's say, Spanish 101. Then you would take Spanish 102. So that would be 2 semesters into no experience. And then you would have your sophomore year. Then Spanish 20220122 excuse me and then that would allow you. So it's essentially sophomore level, but that's if you came in with 00 experience. So for those of you for example.

I was looking this looking up earlier, since people sometimes acts ask about this.

Just to just to finish this particular point, and then I've got another question that I will address.

If, for example, you come in with a peace core on Spanish of the three, that would get you place you into French. Excuse me, Spanish 201, right? AP score of four into the Spanish 202. An AP score of five in Spanish, we get you into Spanish 311. We do offer also offer or language Department offers placement courses into those languages as well.

So gave asks can you mix and match language classes and regions. Of course you can. That is not a problem, it's just I was just, you know, it's an intends to be the most fluid thing, but there's certainly nothing wrong with doing that. And what I would suggest is if you're really interested in the region, but you haven't been developing that language yet, you might try to do a. You might try to do a summer intensive program. Either there are some summer programs at Mary Washington offers, are there some?

Excellent programs, for example, that Middlebury offers. There's some summer programs you could do in country if you have the resources. When I talk about study abroad a little bit more later, but I'll just mention that now.

Marie asks can you do a placement test for Italian? We do divano Mary Sue Profile.

But you can take placement tests in any of the languages that we offer an.

Let Mary Washington offers and there I was looking that up earlier today. 'cause again and I thought people might ask to check the latest on this. It's an online test that you would take before you come to campus and you can find that just just do language. Just Google language placement and you can find more about that online. So great questions so far. Keep those up folks. So I wanted to say since we have a lot of different interests out there that people have have regional interest that people have expressed. I want to talk about some of our faculty. I'm not going to talk about everybody on this list and I'm not going to bore you to death.

Just so you can get a sense of what we're offering, what we have to offer. So at the very top there.

Mr Kramer is are Russia's former Soviet Union Specialists. He also teaches Rus foreign policy class, so that's important either if you're interested, everybody in international affairs has to take use foreign policy. He's the primary instructor for that course, but not the only one. I teach it as well.

Uh.

I mentioned myself before and you can see what I do if you weren't here at the beginning, I'm going to switch down so this list, and by the way, that leads me just very quickly parenthetically dimension.

I also teach in political science. Political science is that is the Department that houses the International Affairs major. So just just to note that and so you can also use me as a resource. If you have questions about political science. I don't take a lot of those in the chat today, but if you want to reach out to me subsequent think like GM. Really. Not sure if I want to major international affairs or political science. I'm happy to pursue that with you in any sort of a follow-up conversation, but so some of the folks on the list here.

Our political science faculty only. So professor Farnsworth Pressure Cooperman for example Professor Lester down here in the bottom. I'm not going to talk about them because they're American politics. They don't do international affairs, but professor Gupta you'll see there is our colleague who specializes. She really has two hats in a lot of us do have at least two hats hurt you. Hats are, yes, she's a specialist in India and South Asia, and she teaches a course on politics in South Asia. But she is also our primary international political economy specialist.

What does that mean? What it means is, for that she teaches and researches international trade an related issues. So the politics of international trade, right? So we're going to tickle science, so she teaches those sorts of things In addition to being our India Pakistan expert Professor Larris I know. Let's see now I'm scrolling back. Richard was interested in East Asia. If other people are interested in East Asia, Professor Larris is our China Specialist.

And she is very, very well published scholar on the politics of China and Taiwan. Both is recently been doing a lot of work on the belt and road initiative for people who are interested in that. She also teaches our politics of developing countries course just coming off a full ride actually where she was in Poland looking at the 'cause China is doing its Belton Road initiative with developing these different projects in various countries. And she was looking at how it's impacting Poland, mentioned professor Melissa Martinez before. But just to repeat, in case people miss that.

She's our Latin America are new Latin America specialists very excited to bring her on board in the fault doing human rights in criminal organizations in Latin America, In addition to also going to be teaching like a course on international organizations. If that's of interest to anybody and then finally.

My colleague, Professor Sing, is a specialist in Middle East politics, Arab Israeli conflict. He also teaches our international relations theory class. Now some questions have been popping up, so I'm going to take a second look at these real quickly. Just pause for a second.

OK, so William your question about starting one old Spanish 101. Yes one and I should mention really quickly for languages. Do people know what you can do? and I would say for most people, if you're not super keen on languages, you're not super experience with languages. Most people make sense to start to take him at the 101102, right? But we do offer both at Mary Washington, both 105. That's a combined course 102 excuse me one or two and we offer a 205 that to combine 201 and 202 course.

I think those are offered most semesters, but there definitely also offered in the summer, so that's something to think about. But even if you come in at a 101 level, or, let's say you're switching languages you've been too in Spanish and now you want to do French or whatever Arabic, right? We offer her back as well.

Uh, you can. Yes, you can start at the 101 level and by junior year you would be done with your language requirement. Even just taking courses. Mary Washington no study abroad and again I'm going to talk about that later. Common for people to major in Political Science. International Affairs. Yes, it happens. It's not something that you have to do.

But it is something that happens. Annmarie asks about defining the difference between political science, international affairs, political science, very good question and I will take the chance to elaborate on that. Just very briefly, political science is just within the discipline of political science. If you're really interested in politics and particularly, I would say if you're really know that you are primarily interested in American politics, then political science is certainly the discipline for you.

If, on the other hand, you think that you're interested in politics, but you're also interested in some of the other things that I mentioned, like geography, like history, like economics.

Right then, international affairs might make sense in, particularly if you're interested in those things across borders. If you're really interested in either different regions of the globe, or you're interested in a particular region of the globe outside in the United States, then political science might be a little too confining for you, and the reason is, again, let's say you're interested in since we got a bunch of people interested in Latin America, let's say you're interested in Latin America. Just hypothetically, you take one course of Professor Martinez two courses with Professor Martinez. You can take an independent study with Professor Martinez. I'm going to talk about that in a second.

Then you'd be kind of tapped out, whereas if you're an international affairs major, you can keep taking those courses in those other disciplines.

OK.

I'm going to move on now and say a little bit more about what specific is really pretty. Much everything that I've said so far other than, of course, our faculty and everybody is going to have different programs at different institutions are going to have different faculty with different expertise, so I definitely urge people if you've got an interest in a region.

I really hope that folks look carefully at the place you're about to attend and make sure that they have colleagues or faculty specialize in the region of the world that you're interested in. But leaving that aside, why umw specifically versus some of the other schools? I know that you all will have been admitted to other schools in your thinking about other schools. That's why you're here doing this webinar.

Well, first of all, we have a great location. On the one hand, I think Fredericksburg is a great place to go to school. It's nice, it's safe. It's quaint. It's you know, not a huge city. That might be a little intimidating to some people. On the other hand, we are very close to Washington DC where you can take. We have a train called the Vehari that runs from downtown Fredericksburg, which is a walk from campus is also bus that runs down there. But there's the Vehari that runs from downtown Fredericksburg.

Down into Washington DC and you can take that people. Of course a lot of people live in Fredericksburg. Do that for their daily professional commutes, right? People who are working full time jobs in DC, but you can do it for an internship and you can do it. And you might say to yourself. Well, Gee, I can go to Christopher Newport and I can get an internship in the summer. Yes you can. The differences.

Can you talk about talk to people about this far and wide?

Um?

The more selective the internship.

Right and so State Department is a particularly selected one with their plenty of like some of the think tank internships. Brookings Institution Council on Foreign relations, what have you?

The more selected the internship the more difficult there they already get during the summer right in the summer you're going to be competing with people from Yale and Princeton and my alma mater UC Berkeley that all flock to they all flock to Washington DC in the summer time if you take one during the semester it's less competitive and it is much easier to get in so not easy but easier to get in so we do place people I'm going to talk about state Department internships in a bit so we've had some people to a variety of different things there say a little bit more about that.

That's one of the great things in terms of the of the location. There's other things in terms of the location we bring people in. We've done this a couple times where we've brought group of students into the State Department for a lecture.

We've organized different events where we bring people into different think tanks and.

Uh, so folks can hear presentations, etc.

That's in terms of our relationship with Washington DC. I guess. One last thing that I mentioned, 'cause I will. I'm going to say talk a little bit more about undergraduate research grants, an independent study. The proximity to Washington DC also does allow you if you're interested in real Advanced Research. We're going to try to help you to Excel to your best ability and what that might allow you is the ability to, for example, conduct interviews in Washington DC as part of your research, and we've had that happen as well with our students. So let me say a little bit more about.

What it means to have faculty focus on undergraduate teaching? 'cause my hope is that you will hear that other institutions as well, White House intern ships. Yes, I'll talk about that, although it tends not to be international affairs. I don't know that we've had any with international affairs we have had. I've had I've supervised some international excuse me. Some White House intern ships with communications tends to be more on the political science side. But yes, we have.

Uh, where was that faculty focus on undergraduate teaching? So first of all, what that means is we have faculty who we are at Mary Washington because we care about teaching undergraduates. We don't. We're not. We don't have graduate students. We don't have PhD students that were worried about.

Uh, supervising their district doctoral dissertations were focused on you first and foremost. Yes, we all have active research and you will see that every single one of the faculty members. If you go on and look, you have a newsletter on our website. If you go and look at that newsletter, everybody is active in research. I have a book that's coming out in the fall.

These are turning out books and articles all the time, but our primary focus is an undergraduate teaching. Well. What does that mean? First of all, when you ask our alumni and I just since I knew this webinar was coming up to about three weeks ago, I posted on Facebook. I know you guys don't even know what Facebook is, but that's what people use an old people look at Facebook, and so I asked our alumni on Facebook. As we've got a Facebook group with four or 500 alumni on it and I said, So what? What's the single most important thing that you took away from your undergraduate experience?

In international affairs at Mary Washington and by the way, you can go and look at this 'cause our Facebook group is is completely open to the public. So if you don't believe me, you can check and they said I can't tell you how many of them said writing. How much they learn from writing now you might say to yourself, Gee, wouldn't I learn that in the English Department? Know you're going to learn writing by writing in a particular discipline, and that's going to help you write as a proof.

Special you may think you have good writing skills already in some of you do, but you can always get better and the way you get you landed your first job and the way you maintain your first job and get better jobs is by getting better at your writing.

OK, so professional work in this field in international affairs is going to entail quality writing skills and we're going to help you develop those by. So what are we going to do? What it means is I sit down with my talk about independent study thesis students. I redrafted their senior theses. I ultimately end up reading probably 4 drafts of what ends up being a 40 to 50 page document during the course of the semester intensive feedback, right? I'm typing comments in the margins were meeting or discuss normally.

Of course not, now, um, although having some meetings online. But we're meeting. We're discussing those comments so writing second critical thinking skills, so having small group classes where I go in and ask questions. I don't go in. In my upper level classes like security and conflict studies and lecture. I go in. I ask questions based on scholarly articles that we read and my students are reacting to that forces them to think on their own and that means that they're going to.

They're going to develop and hone their critical thinking skills with me, helping them along the way. OK, so that's a little bit about writing and critical thinking skills. William asks, what about does this mean that there are a lot of time, a ton of long papers? No, actually most common in our upper level classes is not a lot of long papers. It's revising. I would say medium length papers in our upper level classes, so 10 to 12 Page research papers.

You're writing a draft. Getting feedback on that draft, revising and improving it, and making it better. When I mentioned before, was a special kind of thing which is a senior thesis. They're not required for international affairs, but we do offer to do them with students and the students in the security in conflict minor are required to do them, which is why I am particularly. I do alot. I supervise a lot of them.

But they're not required.

Uh you rez what did you read undergraduate research so you resin and a number of students really really enjoy this and benefit from it is where you pair up with you find a professor that you're sort of interested in their area you do well in their courses and they get they break off a corner of some project that they're doing in terms of their research and they essentially meant are you in how to do research you might say to yourself well Gee I don't want to become a professor and my hunch is out of the 15 of you online none of you do want to become a professor.

Great, it's not. The job market is not ideal for academics. If you do want to become a professor, that's OK. I can help you out with that, but this is not about you becoming a professor. What it is about is you developing really high-end research skills, and when so I had a student that I was working with, Donna. You rez this semester she's.

You know, essentially a senior at this point just got one more semester after this one, so this is our 4th year or excuse me third year.

He's going to be like a 3 1/2 year graduate.

Button yes, she's got a great research skills, but we were working together and she was developing new skills, helping me on a working paper that I presented in Boston before the coronavirus hit last month on the costs of war for US ally since 911. So helping her hone or research skills and our students get a lot out of that. And what we here?

I've heard this in it from a number of students that since I've been at Mary Washington is when they apply to jobs.

That you read stands out because it says two things. It says one that they've developed extra skills and two that the professors had in a faith in them to break off a piece of their research pen and pass it along to them. I heard that explicitly, by the way, we participate in event with the CIA 7 eight years ago, and they said that was one of the things that stood out on applications for Alan CIA analysts.

OK independent study. I mentioned senior thesis. These are along. You know this is something you would do the fall or the spring in your senior year. Again not required with something you could do it sort of the culmination of your time at Mary Washington. I've got somebody right now writing for example, on the different ways that governments respond to large terrorist attacks. So do they use military response to they just do internal security and Y and she's got different case studies. Looking at the USA after 911?

France after the Bataclan attacks and Russia after the back line school.

Uh, attack, so that's just kind of an example again, not something that you have to do something you could use what we call that senior thesis, the other kind of independent study you can do, however, is, let's say one of those people who is interested in Latin America. You take for Martinez is class in Latin America. You take her class in US Latin American politics, but you're still really interested. I don't know. Let's hear. Just sit in Colombia, right? You really want to get more in depth into that. You could do an independent study that is just.

Reading and writing short papers on Columbia that would be fine and we're all happy to supervise those to allow you to go into even more depth doesn't necessarily until writing a super long paper if that's something that's not appealing to you you could just get more in depth in that particular subject something that we're not otherwise offering.

OK, last thing that I want to mention here in terms of Wyatt Yo W is we do have very Fortunately through our administration, very generously supported undergraduate research grants, so I have had people I've had my students. These are not easy to get, but they are doable so I've had students have gotten these grants. I had one get a grant or she traveled to Lebanon and was able to conduct interviews with.

Migrant workers in Lebanon. I had somebody who traveled to Rwanda and did interviews with people who who had survived the genocide in Rwanda. Somebody who traveled to Israel and did research on the Israeli process with human rights and addressing issues of human rights in Israel. So these and you could do them for local research as well. I've had people do them where they did research in Washington, DC.

And that would be great. You might see yourself well, Gee, that sounds really ambitious. It's not something that you just roll out of bed one day and apply for it. Something you build up too. But it is doable, right? Those examples that I gave you a real world, people that built up to this overtime, and it then really stands out on your application when you're applying for jobs or you're applying to things like fullbrights or things like that after Mary Washington, OK?

Some examples who looks like that somehow when they uploaded it, it got changed a little bit.

Uhm, but I think you guys can see the things that you most need to see here.

I'm going to go ahead and I'm not going to. I'm not going to go through and just read off this list, 'cause you can make sense. The first thing I want to say with the internships list, which is a list of the top. That's the bit that got blended into the title somehow, is that these are. There's a variety of different both governmental, so that's the top two up their governmental. An then either you've got non governmental so you've got interest groups and other actors like the National Center for Missing, Exploited Children International Division or a pack.

That are.

APAC is essentially sort of an interest group and then you've got international organizations, like the organization of American states that has its headquarters in Washington, DC, and we've had people in turn, it all these in the past few years. The State Department. I'll just say a second about that since I mentioned it before. It is kind of, I think of it as sort of the gold standard of internships for our international affairs majors. And what's great about the State Department internships is that they give you real things to do. So I had somebody working way back.

People probably don't know about Cyprus. Cyprus is divided and I had somebody working way back when the Greek portion of Cyprus was about to enter the EU. She was working on these issues. They didn't have her making coffee, they didn't have her filing stuff. They had her. You know researching they had her helping out with writing.

Policy papers and so you get you get really serious stuff, and again, you're more likely to not only get this internship if you can do it during semester, but you're more likely to get good topics if you applied during semester, so some examples of some international affairs internship. Certainly there's lots of other internships you could you could get, but those are just some of the examples there, and then I included 'cause people ask about study abroad. One thing to be very clear about because we did have.

Somebody asked about that was any uh again apologies if she's online now I have it go back to see.

OK, didn't look like she made it well. She had good questions anyways, any case. She asked whether you have to study abroad? Absolutely not. There is no requirement that students study abroad, but this is just some of the options. Now these are just the umw approved options I've had. For example, myself. Just recently some students. There's a program in Geneva that is affiliated with another program that's affiliated with umw that has a conflict program where you can work on.

With the UN Commission on human rights, and they had great experiences, a couple different students went together over the summer. Did that? I should mention as well.

That there are not a ton, but there are some scholarships as well for study abroad. So I have had students in the past that got full ride scholarships covered to take care of their study abroad. But if you can swing it, this is something that I absolutely urge people to do. My personal preference is very strong. Preference is to find a program where you can get a home, stay with the family, where you can immerse yourself in the language where you're not just hanging out with other.

American students drinking the alcoholic beverage of the country where you're studying, but that you're actually learning things both about that you're really learning the language intensively, which is something you pretty much only can do in country, but also that you're learning by a home state you're learning with a lot from people that you're living with. Now the beauty. I will say this really quickly to the beauty of study abroad in international affairs.

Is that, UM, you can get. So let's say you're in at this. At the programming Bilbao, right? And there's a course on Spanish history. Boom, that's an elective. One of your Seven major electives, and say there's a class on Spanish politics. Boom, that's another elected.

Enemy of Spain and the EU boom. That's another elective, right? So it is very common for our students to go and study abroad. And yes, will take care of their language requirement. They will also sometimes take care of up to. I don't know. I think I've had up to four electives taken care of and study abroad. So yes, it's more expensive, but you end up not losing a semester. You end up essentially maybe even coming out ahead, but bare minimum. You're sort of where you would have been had you stayed home, so it's not like you have to add another semester on if you want to do study abroad and in terms of the time.

At Mary Washington.

OK, the question or the issue you've all been waiting for. This is just a a brief list and these I should stress very very strongly a front. This is just a list of recent alums, so this is the lungs and I think they're mostly in the past five years. If you want to get a sense, a much longer list, go on our website we have are. We have an alumni tab that has we've got for ambassador to El Salvador was the umw major young W International Affairs Major.

The head special adviser to Barack Obama on North Korea for heart was a, among other things, that was his last position, I believe. But he was a young W alone, so you can find out a lot about are more about our illustrious alarms and just just all kinds of additional things online. When I'll note here is, again, there's a real variety of things you've got people who are engaging in sort of research.

Type work for think tanks, etc. You've got people who are engaging in government work, state Department, Defense Department. We constantly replacing people in those and other institutions. National geospatial intelligence agency I mentioned before we found a number of people working there. We got people working in FBI counterterrorism that's not listed on this list, but that's another potential job for our form. Replace languages. Lot of our students tend to love languages and they some of them go straight from Mary Washington into.

English instruction abroad or they become language instructors, right? So that's something you can do both with this major as an initial job straight out of college. If you're interested in traveling a bit, or you can do that. Of course you do that more long term.

Uh, so I said government, uh oh and then uh, lots of non governmental work so the this SOS International is surely Marty is an example. I should also know I'm going to shop. I'm gonna Shafie there is one of my former students so there's things like refugee laws which is just sort of uh.

Or something at the Nexus between international affairs in political science, so that's an option. 2. Some people do come out with international affairs degree in the end up doing something purely domestic, and that's what you would expect as well.

So I think that is probably a little longer than maybe I. I was weaving questions in, but now is the time if for folks to ask any questions that I haven't already addressed about international affairs at Mary Washington, I am more than happy to address anything that I haven't covered so far, or anything that I've said was.

Was it anyway unclear? I'm happy to try to expand on it or.

Or or address it in any way.

Feel free to just type in on the chat bar. I think I've addressed all the time. Just scroll up here while I'm waiting to see if we get anymore.

And see if there's any that I missed.

So one region that I didn't talk about much Williams interested in Europe in the UK.

Yeah, is is is the UK in Europe. They really never thought so so but no I'm the Western Europe guy.

I haven't been teaching Western Europe recently. Oh, about years and internships. I will come back to that. Thank you Marie, but I'll go ahead and finish with Williams question about Europe. I that is my area specialty, so that's the discourse that a course that I should be teaching.

And I have made a commitment that I will be teaching it in the next three years because I made it to a commitment to a student who's a freshman this year. Who's really interested? So over the next three years I will be teaching that course, so it probably won't be next year. Which means that if you came next year, I would be teaching it sometime after you took policy at 102, which are required courses for all upper level Poly side courses. So I promise I'll get to it. And the other beauty William is. And if anybody else out there is interested in Europe.

Not too many people tend to be, but if you are I'm happy to do independent studies as well. So if I teach that Western Europe class and you're really interested in, let's say I don't know the UK and you want to do more on the politics of.

Student politics British politics.

I'm happy to to supervise an independent study on that.

OK, Uh, I've done some independent studies, for example in French politics. I've been independent studies on Italian politics, so just this FY eyes. OK Marie, what year do you recommend? Students find internships? what I recommend really is it students start looking for internships probably as soon as you know, there, like the summer of their freshman year. If you can land. So one thing that varies tremendously is whether people have to work in the summer time to make money.

Or they don't. So if you don't have to work in the summer time to make money, what I would advise any student is get an intern and unfortunately it tends to be the case in this field that most internships are unpaid, not always, but particularly at the beginning. So I would say at the beginning just get an internship doing anything that is professional and the reason is tends to be the case I mentioned before about those kind of more prestigious internships.

The the well I'll throw out a couple of principles here. First of all, the more internships the better and the reason is developing more professional skills. But you're also networking single most important thing in terms of landing your first job networking. So the more internships you have, the more networking you're going to have. So more internships is better. Second of all, that professional skills accumulate, so the more Inter name you do, the better you're going to sort of.

More acclimated you're going to be to a professional working environment, and the more than when you apply to that, really, you know the one that the one that, as I mentioned, counseling for relations, Brookings Institution, State Department, CIA is really coveted internships. That takes a long.

Trying to get in tons of people replying to they look and they say Well G Marie has three prior internships and she's got these references from all these places.

Yeah, you know she really stands out in terms of this list of candidates versus somebody who waits until their senior year. Now when I say that what that does not mean is that you have to do all those for academic credit.

That's a whole other Kettle of fish. All I will say now is that you can do an internship for academic credit and it can if it's in the major. So let's say you interned at one of the places that I listed. Any other places that I listed on the?

Internship slide any of these places at the top but also lots of others as well. That and you do the three credit internship whether it's during the summer or during the academic year. That would also count as a major elective. So boom, one of your Seven major electives is taken care of as well.

I would say you really only need to do one for academic credit, but I would what I would say is a good rule of thumb. You know I was kind of giving you my. My honest advice is do as many as you can.

Take three would be great too. Is still really solid. At least one. Everybody should should be doing by the time they graduate. Are career services offices excellent. Helping you find the internship that's right for you. We've also got a list on our website of places that you can apply in the DC area for internships and we're constantly keeping track of where our alumni have recently or where our students have recently interned because.

It tends to be the case that when our students go in the intern at national geospatial intelligence agency, that agency is happy with our students and then they're more likely to give one an internship in the future. So thanks, Marie for that question, OK?

At SEO, student athlete doing internship during offseason but.

So one thing about doing internships during summary was asking about doing an internship during the school year.

Um, not during her when she's soon athlete, but I think it's applicable for everybody because the question is, how am I going to do an internship that entails commuting to and from DC and taking classes? OK, join an internship during the semester is not something you would want to do frequently. I would say that's probably something you only want to do once you do want to do it. If you're going to do it, you want to have it be for credit so that you're getting 3 credits for that internship, so that's one of your courses right away.

Well, I would also advise if at all possible, is the real ideal. For that would be fall semester of your senior year if it all possible. Maybe if you had to be in the spring because of sports I would say maybe spring semester, junior year and the reason is you get to that point. And if you've been taking 15 credits a semester you might be depending on what you come in with everything else. You might be a little bit ahead of the game and so then you can take 12 credits instead of 15 credits and that would help.

The other thing you can do working with advisers you can by the time you get to that point in your schedule, you could take upper level electives we've got in our Department often have evening courses, so let's say a Monday 6 to 9 horse, which I know most of you probably wouldn't want to take. I don't know some, maybe some of you were just getting just getting raring to go at 6:00 o'clock at night.

In any case, you could pair an internship that's let's say all day Tuesday and Thursday with a night class on Monday night. So that's another way to deal with another way to deal with that.

But I would say like I said, just once and there are some tricks that we can help you with if you get to that point. And then Leila has a question. Let me just excited to read this study abroad program limited in the schools. No, so you can find other programs and we've got a great study abroad office.

We've got some great people working there and they will work with you to find if there's a particular country that you're interested in a particular region of the world that isn't represented there. They can help you find a program. This is just some that we've had more. Turns out that one of the colleagues in our department for us are seeing his wife works and study abroad, and so she kind of put together. This is her list of the greatest hits of where most we've had. More IA majors. International affairs majors attend in the past couple of years. It's certainly not exhaustive.

And even in terms of the things that are listed on the study abroad website, they are great in that office.

At helping you find an Witkowski is her name and she's great at helping students find programs that meet their interests.

Let's see anybody else.

We've had a couple people bail out, but still if anybody. So one thing I'll say just, uh, since I don't see anymore messages, feel free to keep writing if you're putting together a message, but just a reminder again to my email is going to go back to this slide so you could see it. J David so so it's like J Davidson but without the end at mw.edu you can email me at any point in time with any questions about international affairs at umw, and I'd be happy to respond.

In addition to that, as I mentioned earlier.

OK, I'll address this study abroad in a second. Let me just finish this site.

Where was it? In addition, I mentioned earlier that I'm on Skype at Jason. William Davidson is my Skype name and I'm happy to do a Skype session with you if you prefer sort of face to face where you can ask questions to get back and forth, particularly those of you. I'm really happy if you've narrowed it down to a couple of schools and you're trying to kind of.

To get a sense of the ends and outs of the international affairs at Mary Washington beyond what we talked about today, I'm happy to set up an appointment. Reach out to me by email. I'm also just on Skype at that name Tuesday, Thursday 8:00 to 9:00 and then 1:45 to 3:15 as my office hours for coronavirus world. So Marie asks, what years do you suggest we do a study abroad? Really, doesn't? There's not a set?

Device with the classic way to do this is to try to get your Gen Ed general education requirements. Although now we have a much those you don't know. I don't have time to go into that, but I will just tell you we have a much narrower set of general education requirements than we did previously and you can go on MW's website and find out about that. Or again, if you want to follow up with that kind of thing. If you want to reach out to me, I can point you to what our new generals are. The point is just that they're slim down, so most people would probably be able to get through those.

In less than two years. So the classic thing has been get through those in two years and then junior your study abroad sometime during during the year is probably what most people do. Most people want to be on campus their senior year to kind of experience the senior year at Mary Washington.

There is a requirement. I forget what it is in terms of number of credits. The last group of credits. So I think spring semester senior year, you pretty much have to be on campus, but otherwise you could take for example falls senior year and study abroad. I would say those are probably the the three most common is junior fall junior spring and and.

A senior fall would probably be the most common for study abroad. If you're going to do it during this semester. Summer programs, it really doesn't matter. I would. I would almost say.

You know, if you've had the resources, you could even do it earlier. And who knows, maybe that would be more beneficial.

After after your freshman year, maybe if you're not ready for an internship yet. So that's another option to consider.

Anyone else?

I'm taking this so far as a good sign we still got a 13 people.

Feel free to ask any other questions if you have them.

I'll wait another minute or two.

Here we go.

OK, maybe a little bit of A.

A more specific question, but.

Um?

By the way, just telling me that you can probably see each other. You can all see the chat. Sorry 'cause I keep reading these out. Of course you can see the that makes sense. Sorry, first time I've done this with this particular software. I have done outreach to admitted students many times before but face to face before.

OK, a mass communication. Civil affairs in the army reserves very specific future career. I don't see why this would be a bad idea. We certainly have lots of people who go into military careers. We didn't mention that, but I've had a number of people go into. I think we've. I think I know in recent years have people go into all services.

Tends to be more people going into intelligence, but I've definitely had some other alternatives as well in terms of what people have done, I would probably think that Mass Communication, Civil Affairs, an international affairs, would would match up nicely. We do have a communications major at Mary Washington and you could do I think they have a minor program that would be another possibility. So you compare the two.

But otherwise yeah I don't.

II can't see uhm why that would you know that sounds like a good fit to me from a career perspective.

I it's actually a good so he is giving me a really good opportunity to mention that which otherwise had forgotten to do which is that we do end up placing people in all the services and like I said they tend to be on the intelligent side but if you look at kind of the bulk of them over at least over the period that I've been at Mary Washington but folks end up doing other things as well so that's a great a great option if.

If you're interested and we can talk more about that?

Anybody else.

Well I will draw this out a little bit in case anybody 'cause I don't think it shows me when you're typing it just shows me when you finish I'll draw this out a little bit just in case anybody is currently typing but otherwise I'll thank you all this is really been interesting for me to hear.

Um, often in the face to face. I don't get as many questions.

From from folks because we've got so many people moving through our discovered a so this is actually been nice because you've been able to write out these detailed questions and do reach out to me. I'm happy to talk to you further about anything more about international affairs at W and if it's something even, let's say it's something like I said, like the new Gen eds. It's not really international affairs, but you don't know who else to ask. Feel free to reach out to me and I will send you the information if I don't know the answer. I can always forward it to you.

So it's been a lot of fun and, uh.

I am thank you Richard. Thanks for participating and I wish you guys all the best wherever you end up and hope you have a Good afternoon as well and I hope it's is nice. The weather is nice where you are as it is where I am so take care and do stay in touch.