A new scholarship endowment will allow one Hillsdale student each year to intern at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich.
The Teresa L. Olson Scholarship Endowment is funded by D. Joseph Olson, a founding board member of the Mackinac Center, in honor of his late wife, Teresa.
“The Mackinac Center is the premier state policy think tank in the country without a doubt,” said Gary Wolfram, professor of political economy at Hillsdale and a member of the Mackinac Center board of scholars.
Wolfram said the internship will be important for the Hillsdale economics and political economy students who receive the scholarship.
“It’ll give students the opportunity to take a look at how think tanks work and how they can be
used as a venue to affect public policy,” Wolfram said. “The Mackinac Center has an enormous effect on the public policy debate in the state legislature, and to be able to be at the center of that is a big opportunity.”
The process for selecting yearly internship recipients is still being planned but will involve input from both Hillsdale faculty and Mackinac Center representatives.
According to Mackinac Center Media Relations Manager Ted O’Neil, the summer internship will vary depending on what each intern’s interests are and what the center’s needs are.
“Different interns are assigned to work with various policy directors, whether it’s in fiscal policy or labor or education,” O’Neil said. “They help the policy directors work, doing research and writing about public policy issues, depending on what that specific policy director is doing at the time.” Over the course of the summer, students will also be exposed to a range of economic ideas and topics.
“We also have kind of a unique program,” O’Neil said. “Once a week, we have what is called Intern University, which is held over the lunch hour. All the interns gather and someone, whether one of the policy directors or the president of the Mackinac Center, will come in and give a talk about a particular issue, generally involving public policy but also sometimes the history of a particular issue of economics, free markets, liberty, things like that.”
Interns will also learn about Teresa Olson and her accomplishments, including her background in insurance and her dedication to freemarket ideals and interest in public policy.
Olson has long been a friend of the college, and he and Teresa had a personal connection with Hillsdale through Wolfram. The couple’s particular interest in Hillsdale students led to the creation of the scholarship.
“The Mackinac Center in any given summer will have maybe 10 or 12 interns, and it always seems like we have two or three from Hillsdale because the philosophy is so similar,” O’Neil said.
