PIIE Foundation Scholarship Recipients Connect This Summer
L to R: Colin Mayberry – The Nature Conservancy, 2013; Ramya Palaniappan – Boulder Valley Women’s Health, 2015 & Dylan Mark – Boulder Valley Humane Society, 2012
The Casey Feldman Foundation is proud of all of its scholarship recipients, including the PIIE (Public Interest Internship Experience) students at The University of Colorado Boulder. The PIIE program, established at CU in 2005, provides students with a paid summer internship at a government agency or non-profit, organizations that may not otherwise be able to provide compensation. The Casey Feldman Foundation has funded one student per year since 2010, following Casey’s death in 2009.
Our 2015 recipient, Ramya Palaniappan, interned this summer with the non-profit Boulder Valley Women’s Health, which provides gynecological and reproductive healthcare services and education to adults and teens regardless of a patient’s insured or immigrations status and economic circumstances. Ramya is a major in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and aspires to be a physician.
My husband, Joel Feldman and I held a dinner at our home in Nederland, CO for our University of Colorado scholarship recipients, past and present from both the PIIE and the Alternative Spring Break (ASB) programs. It was a great opportunity for us and our current recipients to see what our scholarship alums are doing now and to provide a comfortable atmosphere in which to connect.
In addition to Ramya, two previous PIIE recipients were able to attend, Colin Mayberry (PIIE 2013) and Dylan Mark (PIIE 2013).
Colin’s PIIE internship was at The Nature Conservancy, the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters. Colin continued to intern there for two more summers and graduated this year summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Environmental Studies and Spanish & Portuguese Language and Culture. Colin is now a first year student at The University of Colorado School of Law and plans on a career in environmental law.
Dylan Mark interned at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley through his PIIE scholarship in 2012. The Humane Society of Boulder Valley provides shelter and care to more than 7,000 animals each year, with 92 percent of these animals being successfully adopted or reunited with their guardians. Dylan graduated in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Sociology and is currently an Internship Development Specialist in Career Services at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he directs the CU-PIIE program, runs training seminars for internship programs and is the main resource for employers seeking CU student interns.
We are looking forward to continuing to hold informal dinners for our scholarship recipients and fostering a Casey Feldman Foundation scholarship alumni group.
Colin Mayberry (PIIE 2013) and Ramya Palaniappan (Piie 2015) with our Alternative Spring Break recipients Nejat Kassahun (2015), Priyanka Guragain (2014), Jamie Haller (2012)
Related Links:
I Have a Dream – “This was the best and most beneficial summer of my life” (Ellie Roberts PIIE 2014)
PIIE Scholarship Recipient Aids Non-Profit Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center (Lynette Schweimler PIIE 2011)
PIIE Awards First Casey Feldman Memorial Scholarship (Mercedes Ruiz PIIE 2010)
“The struggle that I have seen my mother go through is my motivation to achieve my dreams” (Priyanka Guragain ASB 2014)
Scholarship Recipient Vows to Leave this World a Better Place (Jamie Haller ASB 2012)
