Lee Honors College Students Serve as Fellows for Michigan’s 60th District Service Office

Posted by Bethany Gauthier on

Allison Anker (far left) and Tess Whitehurst (far right) are serving as fellows for the 60th District Service Office of State Representative Julie M. Rogers (second from right) this summer.

Allison Anker and Tess Whitehurst are 2018 WMU Medallion Scholars and current Lee Honors College students who are serving as fellows for Michigan’s 60th District Service Office this summer.

Allison and Tess work with State Rep. Julie M. Rogers, who represents the 60th House District, which includes the City of Kalamazoo as well as parts of Portage and Kalamazoo Township. The 60th District Service Office was founded in 1973 for the purpose of providing residents with access to their government and to address the needs and concerns of the 60th District’s constituents.

Allison had hoped to work in a government role this summer and added, “To be able to get a position for a Representative that represents me was the perfect outcome.”

Tess was excited not only to be offered this role, but to learn she would be working alongside Allison. “When the executive director gave me my call to extend out the offer, she let me know that she had talked to Anthony Helms [Lee Honors College Interim Assistant Dean] about both Allison and I and she let me know that we both received the opportunity. This made me even more excited because not only are Allison and I good friends, but we have worked together through summer orientation 2019 and are both Medallion Scholars and have a similar work ethic, so I knew we would get a lot of helpful comprehensive research and constructive work done this summer.”

Daily responsibilities vary in their role and, as Allison explains, “We work on a variety of different tasks! Two days out of each week we go door-to-door, meeting with constituents and spreading information about how they can test their water and paint for lead traces. Outside of that, we are in an office, doing various tasks such as working on tributes, compiling a community resource guide and managing the phones and email.”

Tess further explains that “Although Allison and I are both fellows, we both do different things and are given different responsibilities. For me, while in the office, my general responsibilities are to handle a lot of the scheduling; organizing of spreadsheets for fundraisers, inventory, constituents, etc. We both answer the phones at the office, help to delegate important tasks to the interns and sometimes we do office re-organizing together. The door knocking/canvassing that we do is always so much fun because we get to interact with lots of different people from Kalamazoo and listen to their issues and stories while seeing different parts of Kalamazoo that I have not seen.”

As Allison and Tess continue their work this summer, Allison is grateful for this opportunity. “This experience has already taught me so much about organizing for a cause, which is definitely something I see being useful! I plan to go to law school, and learning how to compile and spread information, as well as advocate for others, is fantastic experience for the future.”

For students who are interested in working in government, Tess offers the following advice: “I have been blessed to have experiences all over the board of politics that has helped me narrow down my future career goal focus on the area I want to go in (local, state, or federal politics). This would not have been possible if I did not start searching for internships at the start of my time at Western, so to any students that I've met, I always suggest starting to search for internships as early as you can because by the time you reach your final year, you could be working in a position that could be career changing! I also wanted to point out how intricate and cool state politics is—which most people don't realize. Our state representatives and state senators are working hard every day to propose new legislation for change that they see needs to happen in their districts and it is so wholesome to see how much they care for their people. Bills and resolutions are being proposed at such a fast rate that people might not know that their opinion or request is being heard, but it is!”

Congratulations to Allison and Tess and thanks to them both for serving our campus community.