Vanessa Ulmer, from Woodstock, N.Y., a Cornell senior majoring in policy analysis and management in the College of Human Ecology, is the recipient of a 2002 Carnegie Junior Fellowship from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Junior Fellows Program.

The award provides a one-year paid internship in Washington, D.C., to work for the Carnegie Endowment as a research assistant on projects such as nonproliferation, democracy-building, immigration, international economics, development and the environment, China, the information revolution and Russian/Eurasian issues. Ten Carnegie Junior Fellowships are made annually from a pool of applicants nominated by approximately 200 institutions of higher education.

"I'm very excited about receiving the Carnegie fellowship and I look forward to working with, and learning from, researchers at the endowment next year," said Ulmer, whose academic concentration is in consumer economics and who conducts independent study examining the development of advocacy campaigns against large-scale coal mining.

Although Ulmer says she isn't sure of her long-term career goals, she is broadly interested in advocacy on issues of environmental and social justice and thinks she may return to school in a few years to pursue a doctorate in political ecology or development sociology.

Ulmer, the third Cornellian to receive this fellowship since 2000, has been on the dean's list in every semester during her Cornell career, and she has been a recipient of a Robinson Award for Academic Excellence, a Golden Key Undergraduate Scholarship and a Cornell Tradition scholarship. She also is a member of Quill and Dagger and is currently the president of an on-campus group called United Progressives, which works to promote dialogue and action on a variety of justice issues at the local, national and global levels.

Ulmer also is active in the Ithaca community as the director of community outreach for On Site Volunteer Services Inc, where she helps to support the programmatic operations and resource development of the student-run, nonprofit organization that recruits and manages groups to engage in volunteer service in Tompkins County. She also is a volunteer at the Southside Community Center After School Program and is an executive board member of TIES (Together Ithaca Empowers Students), which helps recruit, train and organize student volunteers for the after-school program.

In the spring semester of 2001, she worked as an intern for the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network Project with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., where she researched and documented the lending activities of international financial institutions with regard to their environmental and social impacts.