A Problem Solver

Jessica Carter '09 was destined for a career as a chemical engineer.

Seventeen colleges and universities sent their acceptances to the student from the Mississippi School for Math and Science.

She was intrigued by the content of an ILR mailing, though.

"It asked 'Are you a problem solver?'"

"Yes, I am," Carter recalls thinking.

The breadth of the ILR curriculum also appealed to her.

"I had never heard of a major that included so many things," Carter said.

She attended Diversity Hosting Weekend five years ago and "that was it for me," she said.

Carter chose ILR, an 18-hour car ride from her home in Philadelphia, Miss.

By the time she graduated in May, her college career included the ILR Semester in Dublin Program, an internship with the United Nurses Association of California, a credit internship with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Jackson, Miss., and classes which inspired her.

The course "Workers' Rights as Human Rights" with Professor James Gross prepared her for working with people with disabilities who had been wrongly terminated, Carter said.

"You've got to understand the disconnect between laws and actual rights on the job," she said.

Carter remembers the day Professor Nick Salvatore discussed civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer in his African American Social History class.

Hamer and Carter are related.  The woman she had heard so much about through family stories was also part of her curriculum.

This summer, Carter begins a job as an organizer with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

She expects her first assignment to be in Missouri or Pennsylvania.