Honors Student Studies at The Washington Center

Fairmont State students spend summer doing all sorts of things from jobs to vacations.  Kira N. Guier, an honors student from Kearneysville, West Virginia, studied this summer at The Washington Center and interned at DC127.

Kira, a junior, is double majoring in criminal justice and history.

Guier took two courses at The Washington Center. The first class was tailored to her majors in criminal justice and history.  Title Policy Wars, this course examined America’s policy “wars,” especially the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.  In the course, Kira and other students compared the effort to curb the manufacture, distribution, and use of drugs to the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s. They also examined the impact of the War on Terror on American’s sense of security. Kira and her fellow students considered the effects of social policy on Americans’ views of others.  The second course was more general.  Its focus was helping students learn to network effectively in their fields.

Guier also served as an intern at DC127, a nonprofit initiative of churches in the capital to work together to give the 1,200 children in foster care in Washington every chance for success and to "prevent children from entering the child welfare system by supporting families in crisis through our partnership with the Safe Families for Children movement.”

Guier observed, “The internship with DC127 was the best choice I could have made for this summer.  As a smaller nonprofit, DC127 gave me more opportunities to network and work closely with professions than I would have had in larger nonprofit agencies.  The connections I made helped me grow as a professional, and, with my supervisors help, I feel more confident about future positions I might have.”

The Washington Center is an independent, nonprofit organization offering students from hundreds of colleges and universities with opportunities to learn and work in Washington, D.C. for credit.  A primary goal of The Washington Center is to cultivate "well-informed, public-spirited and socially engaged leaders."

Guier has served for the past two years as an R.A. in the honors residence in Prichard Hall.  She is the daughter of Steven and Linda Guier of Kearneysville.

Criminal JusticeHistory