Cole Johnson spent his first two weeks in Cape Town managing social media channels and writing about issues facing refugees in Africa for his internship at the Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa (SIHMA). But watching his supervisors analyze migration policy for the European Union, Johnson was motivated to do more.
His work on an undergraduate research project at MSU and the analytical skills he’d developed through James Madison College coursework equipped him to ask for a bigger role.
What followed was six weeks of policy research and the kind of work that informs international decision-making. Johnson compiled statistics on refugee populations across African countries. He edited papers bound for submission to the EU. He learned how desktop reviews of policy gaps translate into interviews, how those interviews become evidence, how evidence becomes advocacy.
By the end of summer, he was writing analyses examining specific refugee crises, including the outlook for Sudanese refugees fleeing civil war.
Johnson, a junior majoring in International Relations, is one of the roughly 150 James Madison College students who will complete an internship for credit this year. JMC’s field experience requirement — which every student must fulfill during their junior or senior year — offers three paths: a semester-long internship, an education abroad program or a senior honors thesis.
The internship is the most common pathway and roughly 60% of JMC students complete the field experience requirement this way.
This work stretches the impact of the college across the state and around the globe. JMC student interns work with state and federal agencies, local governments, legislative offices, public interest and advocacy groups, legal aid societies and law firms, courts, social service agencies, businesses, newspapers, labor unions and volunteer organizations.
“Field experience is where students discover how the issues they’ve studied in the classroom actually play out in professional settings,” said Lauren Michalak, JMC’s field experience coordinator. “They contribute meaningful work and often leave lasting impacts on their host organizations.”
From the UP to Cape Town
Johnson’s path to Cape Town illustrates how JMC students pursue international opportunities through the field experience program.
In partnership with MSU Education Abroad and other colleges, JMC sponsors a variety of international programs centered on internships. Common destinations include Tokyo, Japan; Dublin, Ireland; London, England; and Cape Town, South Africa. Of the 170 JMC students who interned for credit in 2024-25, just under 15% traveled abroad.
For his field experience, Johnson wanted something different from the typical study abroad program. He chose an international internship sponsored by the college and coordinated by Connect123, a program that supports students studying and working abroad, and landed at SIHMA in Cape Town.
The research team Johnson joined at SIHMA was small — just five people — but their work had significant reach. They conduct research contracted by international organizations like the European Union and United Nations, examining refugee and migration policy across Africa.
Johnson grew up in Marquette, Mich., and the journey to South Africa was his first time outside the United States. Cape Town felt both foreign and familiar: you could Uber everywhere, everyone spoke English, his apartment complex sat in a mall with a grocery store and restaurants. But the work confronted him with international crises he’d only read about in passing.
“There are two million refugees in Uganda and hundreds of thousands to a million are starting to have food scarcity,” Johnson said. “You hear about Sudan Civil War. You don’t hear that it’s the largest internally displaced people crisis in the world, that millions are starving.”
SIMHA uses its findings to lobby politicians, pointing to specific legal gaps that strand refugees without resources or safe pathways. One example Johnson learned: South Africa requires passports for entry, but refugees often flee countries where getting a passport can take 10 to 15 years — if the government institutions exist at all.
A unique element of JMC’s field experience requirement is its two-part structure. After their internships, students enroll in a semester-long course, MC 401, where they analyze and interpret their experiences in an in-depth research paper. Johnson plans to use MC 401 as an opportunity to dig deeper into a topic he began researching at SIHMA, likely focusing on the Sudanese civil war and the limited options faci ng refugees fleeing the conflict.
“The MC 401 research component asks students to step back from their day-to-day internship work and examine it through an academic lens,” Michalak explained. “They take a question or issue they learned about in the field and explore it in depth, connecting their internship experiences to what they’ve learned in JMC classrooms.”
Building towards diplomacy
Taylor Regester, a third-year JMC student from West Bloomfield, Mich., was visiting her aunt in Turkey during spring break when the Mackinac Center for Public Policy called with an internship offer.
The timing felt fitting. Her aunt is a diplomat in the Foreign Service, serving in posts around the world and has helped shape Regester’s career aspirations. “She’s been my role model through a lot of this,” Regester said.
The path to diplomacy has guided Regester’s decisions since high school. She considered West Point — her father served in the military and she has military family on her dad’s side — but the long commitment and distance from home pushed her toward JMC instead, where she is majoring in international relations.
At the Mackinac Center, a think tank focused on Michigan public policy, Regester’s role as Capital Confidential intern centered on writing and publishing articles for the center’s news page. After updating the center’s expert list and analyzing over 800 legislative spending requests, she began researching her own stories.
Her article on rising healthcare costs in Michigan led to an interview with the CEO of the Economic Alliance for Michigan, who turned out to be a JMC alum from the international relations program. She attended “issues and ideas forums” in Lansing on topics including licensing laws and lockdown policies, then wrote about the discussions for Capital Confidential.
Near the end of summer, Regester noticed the center lacked a system for transferring knowledge between intern cohorts. Each year, new interns spent time relearning information. She pitched creating a transition binder, drawing on a similar system she’d seen through her position with ASMSU. Regester and fellow interns compiled their advice, contacts and processes into what they called the “Intern Holy Grail.”
The Mackinac Center experience confirmed Regester was on the right path. The research, writing and policy analysis aligned with the skills she’ll need as a diplomat. The communication across political differences — something JMC emphasizes in its curriculum — proved essential at a think tank where staff embraced open dialogue.
“We spend so much time in JMC talking about what it is to be a good communicator and how to have civil discourse with people that have different ideas,” Regester said.
This fall, Regester takes the Foreign Service exam, the entry test for becoming a diplomat. She's also applied for another internship position that would provide direct experience in diplomatic work while she continues her studies. Looking ahead, Regester is planning to study abroad in Jordan next summer through her Arabic studies minor. She’s also considering pursuing another internship, potentially with a federal agency or congressional office in Washington, D.C., during her senior year.
