Being so close to California's capital is a real-world opportunity for future journalists and policymakers.

The UC Center at Sacramento provides internship opportunities for students attending any UC, but none can take advantage of these opportunities easier than those at UC Davis. Just a 15-minute drive from campus, the UCCS building sits across the street from the Capitol in downtown Sacramento.

The center offers internships and research opportunities in public policy and public affairs journalism for undergraduate and graduate students.

Before the inception of the center, Gary Dymski, director of the program, attended a systemwide meeting with representatives from each of the UC campuses. They collectively decided that UC needed to be involved in the state's public policy affairs.

"The UC has to be at the center of training the next generation of leadership," said Dymski. "The creation of our center comes at a time when there's an entire generation of public servants — the infamous Baby Boomer generation — in the process of retiring. The talent stock needs to be refreshed and I think that this is why we need to be here."

Three years later, in January 2004, the first class commenced and marked the official start of the pilot internship program.

The center currently offers two main areas of study: the public policy track and the public affairs journalism track.

Topics, seminars change

In public policy, students are placed in internships that run the gamut of public affairs in Sacramento. The center's Web site has a list of internships from 2004-06 that includes state senators Joe Dunn and Tom Umberg, the Department of Education and many departments in the offices of Gov. Schwarzenegger.

In addition to their internships, both policy and public affairs journalism students take weekly seminars taught by UC professors. The seminars differ in topic and scope depending on when a student chooses to attend. The public policy track during winter 2007 featured a seminar series on California's trade and investment strategy.

The public policy track this quarter focuses on the intersection between law and politics in California. Summer of 2007 will have two policy tracks with different seminars: one on the state's political economy and another on environment and health policy in California. The public affairs journalism program will also run during the summer 2007 session.

Unlike public policy students, public affairs journalism interns have an additional requirement of a two-week boot camp to cultivate the skills they will need. When the center began the journalism program in summer 2005, the boot camp did not exist.

"We had a course that was taught two mornings a week throughout the entire quarter," said A.G. Block, director of the public affairs journalism program. "We felt at the end of the year that the format wasn't going to work if we wanted to place interns more aggressively with daily newspapers. The students required some immediate reporting and writing skills."

The boot camp consists of several writing assignments and daily meetings aimed at informing students what they will need when they enter their internships.

"The boot camp was the best part of the program," said Bjorn Francis, recent public affairs journalism intern and a political science major at Davis.

"It gave us a chance to experience tough deadlines and also quickly introduced us to the editing process," Francis said.

With the success of its two programs, the center continues to expand and include more students specializing in different fields. Faculty and officials try different experimental programs in efforts to promote growth. One such instance was the fall 2006 public affairs journalism program.

Typically taught in the summer, the program in the fall was created as an attempt to use the opportunities presented by the November 2006 election.

Instead of placing students in their typical journalism internships, Block had the students work as a team to help publish a book, The California Political Almanac. Despite the program's success, Block and others recognize the difficulties of having a quarter in the fall.

"We don't have nearly as many students in the fall as we do in the summer," he said. "I think there is a lot happening on students' home campuses in the fall and they want to be there for it."

UC offers a similar internship placement known as UCDC in Washington, D.C. Some Davis students choose the Sacramento center for its convenience.

"It's about practicality," said Geoff Johnson, a fourth-year English major at Davis and new intern come summer 2007. "I live in Davis and can continue to do so even as a participant in this internship."

Dymski thinks having a UC center in Sacramento as well as in Washington, D.C., sends a message to UC students.

"If we were to have only our UCDC center, then the message is what matters is national policy. No doubt it matters, but we definitely want to send the signal that California matters, too," he said.

Expansion

Dymski continues to work on the expansion of the center. He said that he would like to see more thematic content than the subjects currently offered. In the summer of 2008, the center plans to open a new theme — health policy — beyond public policy and public affairs journalism. With all that is happening, Dymski remains confident in the center and its progress.

"We tell the students when they come here that we'll be able to help them transform themselves to change their lives," he said.

More information: uccs.universityofcalifornia.edu.

Saul Sugarman is a Dateline intern.