CORVALLIS— The new Willamette Valley Legislative Fellowship has completed its interview process and has selected ten fellows into its inaugural class. The Fellowship is designed to equip its participants with the skills, knowledge, and experience to pursue their futures in legislative work. In its first year, the program was extremely competitive receiving far more applications than expected. Due to the level of interest, coordinators increased Fellowship positions from 5 to 9.
While the Fellowship was originally targeted towards college students, the Fellowship received several high caliber applications from high school students and college students alike, which made the selection process exceptionally difficult. This year’s fellows will be Sierra Alveraz (OSU), Laure Arthenayake (Corvallis HS), Anne Broussard (WOU), Andrew Damitio (OSU), Aaron Lewis (Corvallis HS), Claire McMorris (OSU), Harrrison Schreiber (Crescent Valley HS), Clark Shimeall (Corvallis HS), and Norah Storniolo (Corvallis HS).
These ten remarkable fellows will participate in a ten-week series of workshops where they will be learn how to create legislation and run campaigns. “Traditional political internships are short on substance and long on menial grunt work,” Rep. Rayfield said. “I am excited to work with each fellow and look forward to supporting them in the future.”
The Fellowship begins on August 25th and will conclude following the election. While the fellows are completing weekly workshops, on topics ranging from policy development to campaign script writing, they will also be in teams developing policy ideas. At the conclusion of the Fellowship the policies will be presented and the top policy will be introduced in the next legislative session.