Featured Madisonian

Kathleen Romig, Alumna

"I love the professors at James Madison College. They are so open and I've enjoyed getting to know them and work closely with them. They are excellent role models and my classmates are interesting people with interesting passions."
 
A follow up piece on Ms. Romig's experiences in Ireland may be found here.

Kathleen Romig is the university's first recipient of the George J. Mitchell Scholarship, her first choice of three major scholarships for which she applied. She was a Midwestern finalist for a Marshall Scholarship and a state finalist for a Rhodes Scholarship, but withdrew from the latter competition when she heard the news about the Mitchell award.

The George J. Mitchell Scholarships are established in honor of the former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell, who served as chairman of the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland. He served in Congress for 14 years, was Sen. Majority Leader from 1989 until he left the Senate in 1995.

"The Mitchell was my first choice because it has more of a focus on public service and students interested in public affairs," said Romig, a 1997 graduate of Shrine High School in Royal Oak and the daughter of Tom and Ann Romig. "You get the chance to meet political leaders and that appealed to me. [Previous students] even had the opportunity to meet [then] President Clinton during his visit to Ireland. The scholarship program focuses on this type of study and that really excites me."

The one-year program allows Romig to pursue her master's degree in social policy at the University College in Cork, which has special meaning for the James Madison College senior. Romig's family roots are in County Cork in Ireland, and she said many of her family and friends plan to visit her there.

The program includes formal courses of study and seminars and independent research work in her thesis area of social policy. After her graduation she would like to work in Washington, D.C., for nonprofit or other organizations dealing with the plight of disadvantaged children, she said.

In her application essay, Romig wrote: "There are alternative ways of viewing the problems of juvenile justice and alternative methods of solving it. Some of the most compelling are being discussed and tested in Ireland and Northern Ireland right now. One such alternative is restorative justice, a fascinating approach that seeks to balance the needs of offenders, victims and communities."

"I know I want to do policy research on disadvantaged children and other child care related issues," Romig said. "I am very interested in juvenile justice reform and looking at balanced and restorative justice. I plan to travel and see as much of the country as I can and also join the university's choir, because I love to sing and there are no auditions."

Her post-high school and MSU activities and studies helped prepare for new challenges ahead, she said.

Romig worked as an intern in the office of U.S. Rep. Sander Levin in Sterling Heights before she came to MSU. Her university activities include assisting two professors in academic research for a book on women and the Protestant parades in Northern Ireland and serving as assistant editor on multicultural topics for The Gale Group.

She was also a research assistant at the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk through Johns Hopkins University. She was a mentor for freshmen interest groups, a writing consultant for the James Madison College Writing Consultancy program and interned at the Institute for Children, Youth and Families.

Her service programs include Amnesty International, Habitat for Humanity and James Madison College ambassador. She volunteered for the Student Literacy Corps and Students Teamed with Alcohol-Free Freshman programs.

"I am delighted that Kathleen Romig is MSU's first Mitchell Scholar," said Katherine See, professor in the James Madison College and Romig's major adviser. "She has a very sharp analytic mind, intellectual curiosity and a love for learning. She is equally committed to a vision of social change, to the life of the public intellectual and hence toward some policy-oriented career."

Romig also worked with See as a professorial assistant on a project on gender and ethnic conflict in Northern Ireland.

"Since I have known her, Kathleen has been passionate about issues of social justice - the death penalty, violations of human rights, concerns with the rights of juveniles and racial inequalities have all been frontal concerns," See said. "In all of these ways she shares many of the attributes that distinguish George Mitchell, but especially in her abiding interest in restorative justice."

Romig is the recipient of the 2000-2001 Jeffrey Cole Excellence Award, the Walter and Pauline Adams Scholarship, the Gordon and Norma Guyer Public Policy Internship and the Royal Oak Rotary Club and Oakland County MSU Alumni Association scholarships. She is a member of the MSU Honors College, Phi Beta Kappa and is a National Merit Scholar.

"I love the professors at James Madison College. They are so open and I've enjoyed getting to know them and work closely with them. They are excellent role models and my classmates are interesting people with interesting passions," Romig said.

The scholarships are administered by the US-Ireland Alliance, a Washington-based, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to educating Americans about the island of Ireland and to consolidating existing relations between the United States and Ireland, North and South.