In Residence

Barbara Cummings' post on DipNote about her experience mentoring students through the State Department's Diplomat in Residence program, suggests an instructive model for how other agencies might profitably reach out to college students they'd like to recruit. The Diplomat in Resident program is a win-win: the college gets an on-campus resource, and the department gets access to a target pool of candidates and the chance to place some people in an academic environment. This seems like a program that other schools could model very easily. USDA could set folks up at places like Cornell's Ag school and Texas A&M, Justice could have a U.S. Attorney rotation at law schools, etc. Sure, it would require some small sacrifices in manpower to send talented people out on these rotations. But in a world where career centers are shrinking, and recruiting at elite colleges (at least pre-crash) has been taken over by finance and consulting firms, it seems a small price to pay to send a couple of dedicated people out into the field.