News
Public Service Group to Develop New Resources for Federal Interns
Government Executive
Alyssa Rosenberg
The Partnership for Public Service will launch a center to connect college students participating in federal internships and will recruit, hire
and train a group of students to promote federal service on their campuses, the nonprofit group announced on Monday.
The initiatives will be funded by a $3 million grant, distributed over three years, from the Robertson Foundation. The foundation, established in
1996 by hedge-fund founder Julian Robertson, has supported the Partnership as a donor and funded the preparations for its State of the Public Service
scorecard, scheduled to be published for the first time in 2008. Robertson funds scholarship and leadership training programs at Duke University and
the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill that focus on domestic and international work in government.
"This is a huge programmatic investment," said Tim McManus, vice president for education and outreach at the Partnership. "It allows us to do
things we wouldn't be able to do otherwise."
The funds will help the Partnership hire 10 students to promote public service on their campuses during the 2008-2009 school year. The Partnership
posted a job listing for federal service student ambassadors on Monday. The ambassadors would be paid $2,200 for two semesters and a small
remuneration to defray the cost of hosting events.
The other programs funded by the Robertson Foundation grant are less fleshed out, McManus said. The Partnership is trying to determine whether the
internship center should have a physical location, though McManus said it would provide programming to help create a network for students doing
federal internships in and outside of Washington. Partnership staff will be involved with the program in an interim and long-term capacity.
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Tufts Offers Loan Relief to Public-Service-Minded Students and Alumni
The Chronicle of
Higher Education
Elizabeth F. Farrell
Tufts University plans to help pay off the loans of its students who go into public service after they graduate, as well as of its alumni in
public-service jobs, the university announced on Tuesday. Both undergraduate and graduate students across all schools and disciplines will be eligible
for the plan if they work for a nonprofit or public-sector employer, with the amount of loan reimbursement dependent on their loan burdens and income
levels.
The program, which Tufts officials said is the first of its kind in the country to promise such relief to all undergraduates and graduate
students, is modeled after the loan-repayment programs offered by many law and other professional schools, including a pre-existing program at Tufts's
Fletcher School.
"The best measure of our success is what our students do with their lives," said Robert M. Hollister, dean of the Jonathan M.
Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, and one of the creators of the program. "We've been working hard across the university to prepare
students in all disciplines to become effective community leaders for change."
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complete article.
Worried About Future, VA Sends Nurses to Universities — To Teach
The Federal Times
Stephen Losey
The Veterans Affairs Department is worried about the nation’s nursing population — not to mention its future
hiring prospects.
So far, despite a nursing shortage that has hurt many of the nation’s hospitals, VA says it has filled all of the
43,500 nursing positions it needs today, and is replacing the roughly 4,300 nurses who retire or leave each year.
But the shortage has spread to the universities needed to train new nurses, jeopardizing VA's future work force.
Because of a lack of qualified faculty to teach them, more than 38,400 qualified applicants were turned away from nursing
schools in 2006, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Eventually, VA said, that will only exacerbate the already-tough
competition to hire good nurses.
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