The Circle of Professional Life: The Intern Hires the Intern

When Danielle Davis was a freshman at West Potomac High School in Alexandria, Va., a George Mason University student came to her school to talk about conflict resolution and peer mediation. The visit made an impact on the young Davis who was on the school’s peer mediation team.

Flash forward a few years: Davis is now a George Mason alumna finishing a master’s degree at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution while working part-time developing conflict resolution curricula for Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS). Davis’s present job grew out of an internship she held last year, where she worked for that Mason student who inspired her so many years earlier, Kristen Woodward, MS ’09. Woodward, once an intern for FCPS herself, is now a conflict resolution specialist in the school system’s Student Safety and Wellness Office.

So the intern recruited the intern, and now they both have jobs in the same school system. “It’s a beautiful circle,” says Davis.

Internships have long been a part of a well-balanced college career, but their importance takes on new significance in today’s competitve job market. An internship not only looks good on a resume for prospective employers, it also can lead to a professional position, as happened for Woodward and Davis.

And the educational benefits of an internship can go both ways.

“It was really refreshing working with her,” Woodward says of having Davis in the office. “As part of her school work, she had to do a portfolio and write reflection papers. We spent a lot of time talking about her observations and how things relate to practice and theory, and how that translates to our field. She also brought new technologies to my awareness.”

Woodward says she stayed in touch with Davis through the years as a mentor because “Fairfax County Public Schools keeps in close collaboration with Mason’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution…. I truly believe in mentoring and giving students opportunities to experience things in the field.”

Davis says she was always interested in conflict resolution and adds that it was Woodward’s supervisor, conflict resolution specialist Marge Bleiweis, who recommended she attend Mason as an undergraduate. The suggestion was influential. After finishing her bachelor’s degree at Mason, Davis stayed on to work on a master’s.

Now Davis is designing a survey to see what conflict resolution and peer mediation skills “actually stick with students. It worked for me but not all of them walk away with these skills.”

After winter graduation she’s getting married, to a Marine, and next year hopes to find a similar position with the school system near Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.