- Thursday October 10, 2013
Charmaine Wilson-Jones, Public Leadership alumna
College Park, Md.-Global terrorism and security issues may not always be at the forefront of the average college student's mind. For Charmaine Wilson-Jones and Ashley Brown, however, these terms encompass their daily lives.
The two junior government and politics majors were recently awarded internships at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a program that engages students in terrorism research and gives them the tools needed to participate in the national security field.
Brown, a Global Public Health alumna, and Wilson-Jones, a Public Leadership alumna, are on the research team for the Global Terrorism Database.
"We read articles about terrorist attacks that happen around the world and categorize aspects about the attack for the database," Brown said.
Wilson-Jones works to input information into the database, which is accessed more than 50,000 times per year.
"This is the kind of internship where what I do matters," Wilson-Jones said.
Ashley Brown, Global Public Health alumna
START, based at the University of Maryland, provides students from all over the country with opportunities similar to those of Brown and Wilson-Jones and pushes students to be successful in homeland security jobs.
Over winter break, Wilson-Jones and Brown will study abroad in Australia as part of START's international travel experience.
Along with internships and study abroad trips, START also provides career enrichment opportunities for its interns, including Excel skill advancing workshops and research roundtables, Brown said.
"I hope that I become fully equipped with the tools I need to enter the homeland security industry," said Wilson-Jones. "They give us more than enough support to be able to do so."
Source: Umd
