Katy Native Spends Summer As SMU Maguire Intern

Related Media

Julie Maddalena is pursuing a doctorate in religious studies

DALLAS, TX (08/13/2013)(readMedia)-- DALLAS (SMU) - SMU religious studies doctoral student Julia Maddalena from Katy, Texas spent her summer serving as a Maguire Public Service Intern and learned firsthand the value of helping people and communities in need.

Maddalena, majoring in religious ethics, collaborated with the Dallas Women's Foundation and Dallas Habitat for Humanity to conduct ethnographic field research in Dallas among a group of single, working-class mothers.

The Maguire Ethics and Irby Family Foundation Public Service Internships are sponsored by SMU's Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics & Public Responsibility. Each intern is responsible for finding agencies to sponsor their projects, which ultimately are selected for their proposals' ethical and social justice merits.

"These students are setting the course for the rest of their lives and are an inspiration to those who teach and support them. As their efforts show, they are indeed world changers," says Maguire Ethics Center Director Rita Kirk.

Such public service internship grants "help students like me pursue internships in the nonprofit and public sectors," says Rahfin Faruk. "With increasing financial pressures, I'm extremely thankful the Maguire Center has helped me gain development and international relations experience, first at Grameen Bank and now at the U.S. Department of State."

"By providing students cash awards for public service and ethics research projects, these SMU students can commit to the public service projects they always wanted to do, but didn't have the financial resources to make possible," says Candy Crespo, assistant director of the Maguire Ethics Center.

For the past 16 years, Public Service Internships have been awarded to nearly 140 SMU students who have served in more than 100 agencies in more than a dozen countries.

###