Internships

Antelope Valley College for the first time is offering a faculty intern program to women and minorities. Sallie Mitchell-Stryker, project director, said 10 internships are planned to help increase diversity at the college. The teaching staff at the 9,800-student college is overwhelmingly white, she said. While 49% of the school's full-time faculty is female, just nine of the 109 full-time teachers are ethnic minorities.

Six years ago, San Francisco State University professor Kevin Franklin set out to address what he considered "a national crisis"--a shortage of minority teachers in a country where students are more likely than ever to be black, Latino or Asian American. Since then, his Multicultural Alliance has produced more than 200 new teachers--dispatched to classrooms across the country--through a combination of teaching internships, college scholarships, mentoring and personal support.

Re "Florida Is Gripped by Terrorist Scare," Sept. 14: Perhaps Eunice Stone did hear two Arab Americans and a foreign student making joking remarks about 9/11 and commenting about a potential attack on Sept. 13. Perhaps she made the whole thing up. Regardless, our justice system prevailed. The men were cleared of wrongdoing by the authorities and sent on their way. If they did make the remarks in question, they should expect to suffer the consequences of their hateful and inappropriate speech.

At 3 a.m., intern Michael Greger, awakened for the fifth time that night, listened as a nurse ticked off a long list of blood test results for one of his patients, then fell back into an exhausted stupor. Later in the morning, when he checked the patient's chart, Greger was horrified: He had failed to realize that one of the blood tests clearly showed the man was in imminent danger of having a fatal arrhythmia, a heart rhythm disturbance. The patient was rushed to intensive care. * It was 2 a.m.

What a delight to learn that Cal State Northridge is now actively looking for entertainment production facilities and high-tech industries to locate on its North Campus ("Research Park May Fill Void at CSUN," Nov. 1). This is a much better use of the property than the shopping center concept promoted by the school for the past two years. The new tenants will provide revenue to the school and can provide on-site internships and training opportunities that will greatly assist the school in its primary function of educating 25,000 students.

The National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations named six U.S. journalism students on Wednesday to work as interns this year at English-language newspapers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Deanna L. Hodgin, 28, a graduate student at USC's School of Journalism, was among the six winners. Hodgin completed her undergraduate studies at Mills College in Oakland and also attended Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. While enrolled at USC, she has worked at the Los Angeles Business Journal, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, the Santa Monica Outlook and other publications.

Cal State Fullerton offers the best student internship program in the western United States, according to the National Commission for Cooperative Education. John Dromgoole, vice president for the commission, cited the number of placements and the contact with students and employers as factors that made the university's internship center "the premier cooperative education program in the West."

Re "Get real," editorial, June 7 Today's graduates may have unrealistic expectations about their careers, but who can blame them? Forcefully prodded by overeager parents, recent graduates are, on average, far more accomplished than previous generations. Having packed their "free time" with resume-building internships, athletics, advanced courses and volunteer work, their school years have been tremendously busy and demanding. I encourage the editorial writers to take a look at the admissions standards of their alma maters.

Tom Hayden misrepresented the facts when he charged illegalities in faculty teaching loads at San Diego State (March 22). California State University faculty are required to teach 12 "weighted teaching units" (WTU), not 12 units of classes, as asserted by Hayden. The computation of WTU is based on three types of legitimate activities: scheduled classes; supervision of students doing such things as independent study, student teaching and internships; and assigned time for performance of specific, documented activities.

The bubbly, blue-eyed college freshman wasn't sure how a Disneyland internship would fit in with her primary field of study, psychology. But then, the Cinderella wannabe attending a recent Cal State Fullerton job fair didn't much care. "It's been a lifelong dream to work at Disneyland," said Chelsea Rook, 18, who was seeking a seasonal service post at the park. "Any way I could get in the door would work. If the internship turned into a full-time job, even better."