Pitt Honors College, English Department Plan Internship Panel Featuring Michael S. Dukakis Oct. 15

Michael Dukakis

Former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis will address an internship panel at 8 p.m. Oct. 15 in the Twentieth Century Club Auditorium, 4201 Bigelow Blvd., Oakland. The panel is hosted by Pitt’s Honors College and School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of English

The free event, also sponsored by The Pitt News, is open to students and the public. The winner of the annual Al McDowell Memorial Scholarship, named in memory of the Pittsburgh broadcasting pioneer and 1952 School of Arts and Sciences graduate, will be announced during the evening.

The program is titled “The Essential Internship: Snaring One in the Media, Public Relations, and Publishing.” The panel’s scope has been broadened to include internships in public policy, government, and politics. A question-and-answer session will follow the discussion. Students also will have the opportunity to talk with speakers during a dessert reception held after the program.

In addition to Dukakis, a political science professor at Northeastern University, panelists include Stacy Smith, KDKA-TV news anchor; Jessica Bayer, senior associate for recruitment at Burson-Marsteller; Susan Goldberg, the editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland; Elham Khatami, a Pitt student with internships at CNN.com and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; John Sullivan III, executive editor at Bedford/St. Martin’s; and Kerala Taylor, editor-in-chief at Glimpse.org. David Shribman, executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, will moderate.

Brief biographies of the panelists can be obtained at http://www.pitt.edu/news2009/InternPanelBios.doc.

Dukakis, the son of Greek immigrants, won his party’s nomination for governor in 1974 as well as the election in November of that year. In 1988, he won the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States but was defeated by George H.W. Bush. Shortly after leaving the governor’s office in January 1991, Dukakis became a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University and a visiting professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research has focused on national health-care policy reform and the lessons that national policy makers can learn from state reform efforts. He and former U.S. Senator Paul Simon authored the book How to Get Into Politics—and Why (Great Source Education Group, 2000) to encourage young people to think seriously about politics and public service as a career.

For more information about the internship panel, contact Writing Internship Coordinator Caren Marcus at 412-624-1737 or caren@pitt.edu.