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Jennifer Smith of Garden City, N.Y., a senior double major in government and law and English and a graduate of Garden City High School, is grateful to her adviser, Prof. James E. Lennertz, for arranging her internship. “Being able to walk into a professor’s office, have him know you personally and personally help you get on the career road where you want to go has been one of the key strengths of Lafayette for me,” she says.
Jennifer Smith is playing an important role as an intern in the Bethlehem office of Pennsylvania State Senator Lisa Boscola.
“I am doing research on HMO legislation, studying the other states’ statutes that might be a model for legislation that Senator Boscola is considering for Pennsylvania. It’s a key issue for the senator,” she says.
“I call different legislative research associations, organizations, and bureaus for information, then classify and arrange it for the senator and her staff.”
Smith is grateful to her adviser, James E. Lennertz, associate professor of government and law, for arranging the internship.
“Being able to walk into a professor’s office, have him know you personally and personally help you get on the career road where you want to go has been one of the key strengths of Lafayette for me,” she says.
She began her internship by writing letters in response to constituents’ correspondence.
“That gave me a sense of the nuts-and-bolts approach of local politics in terms of dealing with personal, one-on-one concerns of local residents,” she says. The internship has given her valuable experience.
“I wanted to gain out-of-classroom experience and pursue a variety of career fields to determine what I enjoy best and perhaps what I can follow up in the future,” she says. “It is a wonderful feeling to employ lessons learned in the classroom in the real world.”
Nancy Wilt, administrative assistant to Boscola, is quick to say that the internship has also proved beneficial for the senator and her staff, and has helped show them how valuable an intern can be.
“Jennifer has no problem jumping in and tackling whatever we assign her. The HMO research she has done will be crucial to legislation the senator may be interested in drafting,” Wilt says.
“It’s been pleasure to have here,” she adds. “You could call Jen one of our guinea pigs, so to speak, and she has proven herself extremely capable. Whoever follows her will have big shoes to fill.”
Another Side of Jennifer
A member of Pi Sigma Alpha, the national honor society for political science, she is a campus tour guide for the Office of Admissions. She has tutored neighborhood children in the Kids in the Community program and the March Street School program, two of more than 25 programs of sustained voluntary service that Lafayette students conduct annually under the auspices of the College’s Landis Community Outreach Center. She has also helped fellow students with their writing assignments as a Writing Associate in the College Writing Program. Last spring she spent a semester studying abroad in Lafayette’s program at Visalius College of the Free University of Brussels, Belgium.