UC Davis student and Washington, D.C., congressional intern Maria Nozzolino has a simple message to deliver to her classmates studying back home in California: "Come on out," she says.

In the UC Washington Center program, Nozzolino's living and attending class in a brand-new building near the White House. She's getting hands-on experience in a career field - public policy - that she's considering, doing research on Supreme Court decisions at the Library of Congress and, after-hours, she's exploring a city with boundless cultural opportunities.

The enthusiasm that Nozzolino, a junior political science major, has for the UC Washington Center is typical of many of the 45 UC Davis students and several faculty and graduate student fellows who participate in the program each quarter. Washington, D.C., is a place, they say, that provides academic and professional opportunities like no other. Spending a quarter - or more - at the center is an option that more on campus should take.

"This is a situation where no one should be unhappy," said American studies professor Carole Blair, who directs the UC Davis portion of the UC-wide program. "The faculty do their research and teaching; the grad students the same, and the undergraduate students get these wonderful (internship) opportunities."

Blair, who first came to the center in 1995 as a faculty research and teaching fellow, and other long-timers at the center say the UC program has always been a good one for faculty and students, but the completion last fall of the new UC Center on Rhode Island Avenue made it an even better one.

Rather than being scattered in apartments throughout the city and northern Virginia, students and many faculty fellows from across the UC system are living in an 11-story, UC-owned building several blocks north of the White House.

Residents live on the upper floors and come downstairs to attend class, use computer labs and hear speakers brought in the by the center, which previously had office and classroom space in the Foggy Bottom area of the city.

"You don't even need office hours, you are always talking with (faculty members)," said Maria Mercado, a senior who spent winter quarter at the center. "They are so involved in your research project."

The intellectual life of the center has increased, Blair said. "There is a feeling now that this a place where things really happen."

Epidemiology professor Garen Win-temute has been spent the past 11 spring quarters at the center. He researches handgun violence prevention and teaches a health-policy class based on issues being debated in Congress to "motivated, self-selected students."

"I look forward to shooting up a new set of learning curves each spring," he said.

With the new facility built, Wintemute thinks he'll be spending many more years as a fellow. Along with offering him a convenient place to live, the center provides him with an office for a new firearms policy research initiative Wintemute is working on with colleagues from Johns Hopkins and Duke universities.

Despite the accolades participants give the program, it remains a hidden gem on the campus, say many.

Nozzolino says she has wanted to attend the center since her freshman year, but Mercado, a sociology and English major, said she only stumbled onto the program earlier this year while visiting the Internship and Career Center. Other students fail to apply for the program because of financial concerns that the center could address, Blair said.

For fellows, Blair has not had a problem attracting political scientists and historians. But she does want faculty members and graduate students from all fields to give the fellowship a try. Faculty fellows teach three classes a year, a decrease from their usual load, and can enjoy research at institutions as diverse as the Folger Shakespeare Library and the National Institutes of Health. Graduate students divide their time between dissertation work and assisting in the research seminar class taught by Blair.

"There is something for everyone here," she said. It's just a question of whether they find it relevant to their work,"

Graduate fellow Toby Edwards, who has been at the center for two years, is wrapping his dissertation on ethnic conflict in the post-Soviet states thanks to research at non-governmental organizations such as the Wilson Center and the United States Institutes for Peace. "It's takes something to move out here," he said. "But it's the nation's capital. There is so much going on."

After the events of Sept. 11, many students worried that there was too much going on - tightened security measures, anthrax threats and the sight of a still-gaping hole in the Pentagon - in the nation's capital to make it a safe place to study. But after a slight decrease in applications, students are now applying to the center with new resolve, said Margaret Sallee, a Washington Center program assistant.

"They want to step up and do something patriotic for their country," she said.

First-year faculty fellow Alan Elms said a potentially troubling period in Washington has turned out to be a good time to spend in the program. His work as a psychologist finds him studying how political figures react to crisis based on their individual personality patterns.

But, Elms said, the months after the attacks were also an appropriate period for students and faculty to inaugurate the new center. "We feel we're participating in a common effort to carry on with a shared mission during this period of crisis."

After Sept. 11, Mercado said she and her parents were nervous about her upcoming trip to the nation's capital.

"But at the last minute I decided that I would go anyway because I knew I wouldn't get another chance to do this," she said.

Ultimately, her time in Washington was, she said, "the best quarter I had at Davis."