Working for governor's office, TU junior finds new perspective

By Christine Collins on September 11, 2016

In a contentious and difficult political climate, a Towson University junior found her experience in state government to be anything but.

Lauren Cahalan ’18 spent her summer in the Governor’s Office of Community Initiatives as part of the state’s Summer Governor’s Internship program. She wasn’t getting coffee and making copies. She was working on a major outreach initiative as the coordinator of Day to Serve, a community engagement and volunteerism project that combines efforts with the governors of Virginia and West Virginia, and the mayor of Washington, D.C.

“I never thought I would ever get involved in state government,” Cahalan said. “Having this internship showed me that state government is a lot closer to the people that are affected by it.”

Cahalan, an Honors College student double-majoring in political science and economics and a member of the TU gymnastics team, wants to work at the federal level as a policy analyst. But getting this close-up view of how state government and outreach efforts work made her realize some of the smaller details and how they add up to building something meaningful for citizens.

“It was really a great experience to be able to learn the process of the grant application and how they were awarded,” she explained. “It really showed me that grants play a huge part in public service and the importance of grants being able to make things happen …[for] a lot of different communities.”

The governor’s office, under any governor, runs the internship program to give Maryland students an opportunity to work in one of several areas. For Cahalan, the opportunity let her reach out to colleges and universities to ask them to get involved in Day to Serve. She also helped review grants and determine awardees, so that organizations could hold outreach events.

Since this was an internship, Cahalan wrote a policy paper for course credit. That paper included a course recommendation for TU: let students work with a nonprofit organization to help plan its involvement in the governor’s Day to Serve program, while also learning why the nonprofit exists and how civic engagement creates change. It’s not yet clear whether such a course could be developed, but the idea, and the experience of proposing it, added to Cahalan’s experience.

Cahalan and other students also put together a proposal for Governor Larry Hogan’s cabinet to consider. Their research on recidivism revealed that individuals released from incarceration often cannot access essential personal documents required for everything from driving to renting an apartment to getting a job. The students proposed that the state establish a pre-release portfolio to give to incarcerated individuals when they are released, containing their identification, birth certificate, Social Security card and other items. By providing those documents, an obstacle to normal living is removed, decreasing the likelihood of re-offense. The proposal was left with the governor’s cabinet.

Cahalan says the internship taught her more than one valuable lesson, and changed the way she thinks.

“Not everything is in a textbook and not everything can be learned through reading and learning in class,” she said. “It’s changing my mindset to taking what I learn in class and seeing it as a real-world problem. How can you form a solution?”

Cahalan will take that mentality with her through the rest of her time at TU, and through graduate school, where she plans to earn degrees in international studies and law.