The Archer Center

August 2006 Spotlight: Current Fellows

Fall 2006: A Class of Firsts

Aside from sending out the first Archer Center Spotlight, we have reached a very important milestone in our history. This fall, for the first time in five years, the Archer Center will have a representative from all nine UT System Campuses! We extend a special welcome to UT Brownsville’s first Archer Fellow, Angelica Martinez. Angelica is an English major from Brownsville, Texas who plans to pursue a career as a teacher upon graduation. In the future, she plans to draw on her personal experiences in Washington, D.C. to show her students that participating in politics and public policy on a national level can be more than just a dream.

The fall 2006 class is comprised of 23 students; 8 females and 15 males. They arrive September 1st and will again be living in two historic row houses on Capitol Hill. The Fellows will spend their first weekend exploring and discovering various parts of DC by deciphering clues on the Archer Fellow Scavenger Hunt. They’ll get their first glimpse of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley en route to a relaxing day with Congressman and Mrs. Archer at Cherry Hills Farm. Other highlights of their first week include meeting mentors, touring the Pentagon, visiting Mount Vernon and of course, class with Dr. John Daly. After all these exciting events, the students will begin their internships. Some Fellows have already secured fantastic positions at organizations such as the FBI, the China Commission and the American Medical Students’ Association. We would like to extend special congratulations to Oren Lund, who will be the first Archer Fellow to participate in the Supreme Court’s Judicial Internship Program!

And, as mentioned earlier in the Spotlight, this June, marked the inaugural Archer Summer Orientation where students from both fall 2006 and spring 2007 classes (pictured above) met in the Texas hill country for a weekend of socializing, professional development and tubing down the Guadalupe! It was a great success and a without a doubt, the first of many great things to come.

We would also like to welcome Dr. Dan Pearson to his first semester as an Archer Center Professor. Dr. Pearson will be teaching “The Policymaking Process,” which had been taught by Dr. John Horrigan for the past five years. Before moving to Washington, Dr. Pearson taught political economy, international politics and foreign policy at the University of Puget Sound, Pacific Lutheran University and Whitman College. He now works in the U.S. House of Representatives as the Deputy Staff Director of the Committee on Science, and spends his ever-shrinking free time practicing a Japanese martial art and traveling to Japan as often as he can to see his teacher.