More Steps on the Way to Juneau

I'm still trying to figure out the right way to blog about this upcoming Juneau gig without bringing heat onto my boss.  He's seen the other posts that have touched on this and thought they were fine, so let's proceed.

Yesterday I went into the office to meet with Rep. G about the idea of setting up a Legislative Fellowship program and more hiccups because of my unusual status.  The regs have four clear categories of legislative folks:  legislators, staff, interns, and volunteers.  It turns out that volunteers tends to mean people who come in and work for a few hours, either someone who knows the representative or to get the experience of working in a legislative office.  There's a high school program, for example, where students do some work for a few hours a week.

My category is volunteer.  But I'm actually going to be more like a regular staff person.  Staff get keys to the office and id's for the computer system and email accounts.  Volunteers do not.  So there was some discussion about how to get me the staff access while I'm a volunteer, and also whether I need it all.  Probably getting into the building and office shouldn't be a serious problem since there ought to be others there when I need access.  But since they want me to be in the loop on things, having an email account and access to the internal system seems necessary.

Rep. G's vision for me is something like a scholar in residence and he'd like to see a program like that in the legislature.  Early on in my career I had a NASPAA Fellowship (NASPAA is the National Association of Schools of Public Administration and Affairs).  That program was set up for young public administration faculty to have work experience in federal agencies and I spent one year at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in DC working as a program and policy analyst.  I got to work with people like the director of the National Weather Service and a key job I had that year was to study the impacts of applying user fees to  NOAA services and products.   And during the budget process, I got to play the role of OMB (Office of Management and Budget) and question the department heads on their proposed budgets in mock hearings before they really went before OMB.  The Fellows from different agencies meet regularly to share experiences. It was a great program that gave me lots of valuable experience and insights that helped me a lot when I went back to teaching at the end of the Fellowship.

Later in my career I had a Fulbright Fellowship in Hong Kong.  But that was a more traditional teaching position at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  But it did lead to more  research and connections in China. But it had some of same characteristics of getting to know a new institution and working with the other Fulbright Fellows in Hong Kong that year.

The general idea about such fellowships is to get professionals and/or scholars to work in a legislative or governmental setting where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship.  It's usually on a limited time basis - one session, one school year, one year - and then they go back to their primary employer.


So, I've been looking at different programs that embody the ideas that Rep. G has in mind.  What I've found so far is this: 

• There are a number of Legislative Fellows programs in different
  states, California, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Oregon, to name a few.  But
  these are really what I'd call internship programs because they are for
  undergraduate and graduate students.  Alaska already has this sort of program, it's called the Legislative Internship Program.  
• The White House Fellowship program selects about a dozen
  professionals a year from a wide array of professions to work in the
  White House or in Federal agencies.  They basically work for their
  agency for the year with special meetings of the Fellows as a whole.
  This was the model I was looking at - though, perhaps it might make
  sense to have something just for the legislative session.
  
  
• There are a number of Congressional Fellowship programs - for
  Americans and for citizens of select countries around the world to come
  to the US and work in the Federal and even in some state legislatures.
  (It might be useful to see if Alaska can snag one of these..)  Many of
  these programs seem to be organized by other agencies that do the work
  of selecting the Fellows - Fulbright, Professional Associations (ie.
  engineers, pharmacists, etc.)
  
  
• There are similar Fellowship programs that place fellows in Federal
  Agencies. 
  
  
• There are scholar in residence programs as well.  The NY City library
  has one, but most seem to be at Universities. 
  

So now we are trying to pack stuff. Some things are easier than going to Thailand. We can have our mail forwarded for example. There's a caravan of legislative folks driving down to catch the ferry at Haines and someone in the office said I could give him a suitcase to take along. We have a housesitter set up to move in. But I know there will be a million last minute items. But what happens happens and worrying isn't going to help much. Everything seems to work out one way or another.