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Sadie Kitchen ‘10 

What do your job entail? I am an Assistant in Resource Generation for United Way of Greater Portland. Most of my job consists of data synthe-sizing and research on our top 60 companies. I help with individual giving cultivation by develop-ing donor profiles for current and potential $10,000 and up donors. I also am the primary grant writer for my department raising $25,000 in funds through grant applications to private founda-tions and a variety of federal campaigns. Apart from the fundraising aspects of my job, I assist with training development programs for our sea-sonal campaign staff and our partner agencies. I also serve on a scholarship committee as the staff liaison managing 8 volunteer members who review applications to give a $12,000 scholarship award annually.

Do you use what you learned in Govern-ment in your job now? The work I do now is more directly related to non-profit organizations rather than directly correlated to Government. In a more tangential way I suppose I use what I learned in my courses in regards to writing, ana-lytical thinking and research.

What kind of influence did your Govern-ment major have on what you did after college? What did you originally want to do after Skidmore? After college I taught for a year in China through Skidmore's alumni Teach in China program. I was a professor at Xingtan Col-

lege in Qufu, Shandong province, and taught oral and written English. My desire to go abroad was motivated by the thought that I would eventually want to do some type of foreign affairs work, possible try to be a Foreign Service Officer with the State Department.

Although such work is not out of the question in the future, I think my work might be more non-profit international development focused rather than government focused. My shift in interest to non-profits is motivated by my current position with United Way of Greater Portland, as for inter-national development- after writing my Govern-ment thesis it made me realize that I had a keen interest in discovering how communities develop in creative ways and what the government and individuals do to assist in that work. Ultimately, you can say that my Government degree gave me a good jumping off point to pursue or expand my other interests.

How did you get to where you are now? Graduate work, etc. How did your Skid-more education help you succeed? I have not gone to graduate school yet, but intend to in the near future. I think the internship funds that both the Skidmore Opportunity Fund and the Levine Internship Award provided me allowed me to gain enough experience in the work force be-fore graduation that I found it much easier to get a job following graduation then some of my class-mates. That, and a number of interviewers consist-ently commented on the excellent reputation of Skidmore College which also helped to distinguish me from other applicants applying for the same position.

What classes were most interesting to you when you were in college? Who was your favorite professor? This is a dangerous ques-tion. The government department has a myriad of wonderful professors with such a diverse breadth of classes. I think the class that I found most unique was when I was luckily enough to have the opportunity to create my own course and develop an independent study program with Professor Seyb in Political Rhetoric my Sophomore year. I also greatly appreciated Professor Breslin's freshmen seminar on the Killing State and Professor (Flagg) Taylor's class on Dissident Political Theory as they both pushed me intellectually and truly challenged me. Completely unrelated to government, I also relished the opportunity to spend an entire semes-ter learning about one author under the expert tutelage of Professor Black in Reading Dickens.

What is your favorite part of your job? My favorite part of my job is working on the scholar-ship committee as we get to award some very deserving students with funds to help them attend their first year of college. I also enjoy interacting with our partner agencies through the training work I do with them. It allows me to truly under-stand how the work I do every day and the funds my department raises helps the community through these partner agencies.

If you could have any job, what would it be? This answer changes almost constantly but I would ideally love to be one of two things: a re-search analyst with the Brookings Institute or a consultant or project manager for an international development nonprofit.

A LUMNI P ROFILES : A L OOK AT L IFE A FTER S KIDMORE

Amy Bergstraesser ‘11 

 

Two months ago, I returned home from a year in China with Skidmore's Teach in China program. Although my ultimate goal is not to teach, that experience changed my life, and my government major definitely helped me in China. Each semes-ter, they gave me a Chinese government-approved book to work from for each class and essentially said, "ok, well you're on your own now." Although, this was pretty intimidating and challenging at first, I found it very freeing in the long run. I could basically teach about what I want-ed to teach about within the scope of the class title. I found that debating and giving speeches in my government classes prepared me to be, for eighteen hours a week, basically on stage lecturing to thirty Chinese students.

By the second semester, I was working with one other teacher to innovate the first creative writing course ever for Sun Yat-sen University,

and the students took to it tremendously. It was like they were itching to write freely and tell their life stories which, I think is an indicator of what the entire Chinese population is feeling right now. Currently, I am developing a land management plan for the Nyquist-Harcourt Wildlife Sanctuary, and I am applying to law school. I knew when I graduated that I wanted to pursue international law, and I am sticking to that goal. When the law school applications are in and the land manage-ment plan is complete, I hope to work for a law firm in Chicago, New York, or Washington DC to get my bearings in the law world for a few months before school starts.

Obviously, my government major greatly influ-enced my decision to pursue law. One way in which you can really make a difference in the world is to create the laws that govern internation-al relationships. I took Professor Ferraioli’s Civil Liberties class and couldn’t put the book down. I wanted to soak in as much knowledge as that class could bestow on me.

My favorite professor… I have to say, you couldn’t have asked a harder question. The teach-ers are fundamental to what makes Skidmore great.

I had so many fabulous, enthusiastic professors that would talk with me for hours and provide guidance whenever I needed it. But, if we narrow in on the government department, I would say Prof. Seyb and Prof. Ferraioli were my two favor-ite government teachers. I couldn’t help but be captivated in Prof. Seyb’s courses. He would (and did) break his foot to entertain a class. He also has such passion for what he teaches… it’s contagious. I never thought LBJ would become one of my favorite presidents until his U.S. Presidency class. Prof. Ferraioli uses her amazing life story to draw from in her classes. She always refers to Disney, her work with battered women, and her studies of Native American rights. Her classes are dynamic and extremely interesting.

Last but not least, my dream job continues to be U.S. Secretary of State.