Lona Stanley, Research and Consulting Intern

Ethics Resource Center 2003
Lona Stanley

As part of my graduate program, I am required to do a professional internship between my first and second years that will allow me to apply some of the knowledge and skills I have acquired throughout my education. Finding a good internship, which allows for more than making copies, fetching coffee, faxing and filing, is not easy. I was determined to find a job that would be a valuable learning experience, where I would be given real responsibilities and be allowed to test the skills I had been learning from books in real-life situations. Leslie Altizer, an alumnus of my graduate program who now works at the Ethics Resource Center (ERC), emailed one of my professors about the possibility of taking an intern, and I jumped at the chance.

The research I did on the ERC and its work intrigued me, and I was excited at the thought of working with a non-profit rather than a large corporation. My experience with undergraduate education made the ERC very attractive to me. I attended Spring Hill College, a small, Jesuit liberal arts school. Receiving a liberal arts education made me value any opportunity to incorporate other disciplines into my chosen field of study, Industrial/Organizational Psychology. I am very interested in History, English, Philosophy, and Politics, and believe strongly that through the integration of different perspectives, we can arrive at better solutions to the many problems we as a society face. Equally important to me is the sense of responsibility to work for social justice that I developed while in college. Working toward a greater good and using one's education in order to benefit others are fundamental values in the Jesuit philosophy of education, and, consequently, have become important to me as I enter the workforce.

I worked on several of the ERC's major projects this summer. For a multi-media
company, I was part of a team conducting focus groups on site. I was responsible for responding to email questions from survey participants and identifying possible problems with the online administration of the survey. I worked with the raw data from the survey to set up the database and run initial analyses. I participated in the "data dump" with all members of the project team, where we discussed what conclusions we would include in the report to the client. I also edited and provided feedback on several versions of the report, from first draft to final revision.

I contributed to the ERC's work for a large city school system, again setting up the database and helping with survey administration. I was there to talk through the problems we encountered and brainstorm solutions to those problems. I had very little experience with program evaluation research prior to my involvement on this project, and it became a valuable learning experience for me. By seeing some of the problems we faced, I have a more realistic view of how research is conducted outside of academia, and I have a much better appreciation for how important (and difficult) it is to maintain the integrity of each project. It is very easy to take controlled conditions for granted in an academic setting. Conducting quality research under the constraints of budget, time, and client demands requires constant vigilance and commitment to the quality of the product produced.

One of my favorite projects this summer was the report on a census of a foreign government's employees. I was asked to sit in on two days of meetings with their representatives at the ERC's DC headquarters. I was then tasked with making edits to the report based on discussions from those meetings. Eventually, it became apparent that the report was going to need more substantive changes than had originally been anticipated. While I was given plenty of space and independence to do as much as I felt comfortable doing, I had plenty of support. My supervisor, ERC Senior Researcher Josh Joseph, had the infinite patience to answer my many questions and talk me through any confusion I encountered. In the end, we created a report of which we can be proud.

Fortunately, my involvement with the ERC is not ending with my return to school. I will still be involved in a number of projects. I will be working with the research staff to conduct some supplemental analyses on the National Business Ethics Survey in an effort to gain a more complete understanding of the factors that contribute to an ethical culture. I will also be working on the 2003 survey for a major defense industry corporation that is about to get underway.

My summer at the ERC has not just allowed me to integrate knowledge from many sources and to make a valuable contribution to the organization-it has REQUIRED me to. I could easily have been assigned to copy duty, or to organizing the file cabinets and the computer files. Instead, I have had to utilize my research and statistical skills, writing ability, knowledge of psychological and sociological principles and theory, and then interpret the results in the context of the current political and economic climate. I cannot think of a better place to be working in the wave of the corporate scandals that have hit the country in the past few years. It has been both challenging and rewarding at the same time.

Being fortunate enough to receive an education comes with the responsibility to pass on what you have learned and to give others the opportunity to learn from you. "Giving back" is our social and ethical responsibility. The ERC embraces that responsibility, not just by taking on interns, but by also allowing them to use their gifts and test their knowledge in real situations. They do not relegate their young employees to monotonous tasks, but encourage them to participate, contribute, and learn.

Lona Stanley worked with the ERC research and consulting staff on several important survey projects, participating in all aspects of the work from focus groups to editing. She plans to continue working with the research staff on two additional projects during the school year while pursuing a Master of Science in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at Radford University.