Grad student Ben Turner completed his MA this Fall (“Attitudes and Knowledge about Climate Change” under the tutelage of Dan Montello, Catherine Gautier, and Eric Smith), and he is now a Fellow in the California State Assembly Fellowship Program. The program is sponsored by the Center for California Studies at California State University, Sacramento, and it provides “an experiential learning opportunity in California state government. Fellows work full-time in high levels of the Executive branch and meet weekly for graduate seminars”…“The mission of the Center for California Studies is to strengthen democratic governance in California through preparing people for public service and leadership, helping to solve problems of public policy and multidisciplinary education.”
As a fellow, Ben will function as a full-time professional staff member for California ’s Executive Branch. “ Fellows in each program work for 11 months, receive health benefits and a monthly stipend of $1972, and are considered employees of CSUS. They…are typically given assignments with a significant amount of responsibility and challenges. Fellows also enroll as graduate students at CSUS and receive 12 graduate credits from the CSUS Government Department or Public Policy and Administration Program. The enrollment fees are paid by the programs.” For more about the program, see http://www.csus.edu/calst/assembly/ .
Ben describes his experience with the fellowship program to date as follows: “At the beginning of the program you go through the same training as new state assembly members. This involves three weeks of policy briefings on various issues that the legislature is facing, getting trained on the legislative and budget processes, and "ethics" training. Throughout the training process, various legislators buy you lunch and try and convince you to work in their office. At the end of the training process, each fellow (there are 18 of us) interviews with about 20 of the 60 assembly offices who requested a fellow. The offices make a ranked list of their top five fellows, and each fellow makes a list of their top five fellows. At the end of the process it was tough to decide who you wanted to work for. Despite their low approval ratings among the general public, there are a lot of pretty impressive people in the Assembly and the Assembly staff.
I ended up deciding to work for Pedro Nava’s office for several reasons. His being from Santa Barbara was a big plus – I’ll be back in town for the staff retreat in two weeks. He also sits on some committees that I wanted to be involved with. He chairs the Transportation Committee, sits on the Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee, and the Natural Resources committee among others. Also, because you mostly interact with other members of the staff, they play a big roll in the decision process. I interviewed with his Chief of Staff and the Transportation Committee consultant, and they seemed like they would be really great people to work for.
When actual work starts, fellows carry out a number of tasks. Fellows staff bills – meaning, you work on the language of the bills that your member is authoring, negotiate on behalf of your member with stakeholders and lobbyists, prepare the member for speeches by briefing them on issues and information relevant to their audience, staff committees – provide information to the member on the bills that they will be deciding upon in the committee hearings, and, along with the analysis from the party leadership, help them decide how to vote if necessary. Other tasks can include responding to constituent concerns, answering phones, and generally helping the office run smoothly-like any other member of the staff. So far, it has been a lot of fun and really interesting. It is a dynamic environment where you are constantly learning, and every day is different from the previous one. The biggest drawback is having to wear a suit everyday. After the program I’ll probably continue working at the Capitol for at least a few years.”
Note: Ben is pictured above with fellow grad student Lisa Murawski who received her MA in Spring 2007. Ben titled the photo "Goleta Gothic" – quite a contrast to being a "Sacramento Suit"!
