FAMU Students Plan for an Extraordinary Summer

Florida A&M University (FAMU) students will use their summer vacation to apply skills learned in the classroom to real life situations.

Like many other college students in the nation, FAMU senior Georgia Dawkins has a summer job. Unlike others, she will be working at ABC News for Good Morning America and America this Morning.

FAMU graduate student Thaddeus Payton is taking his success in the agriculture industry. Payton, who recently won first place for the emerging technology category at the 15th Biennial Research Symposium sponsored by the Association of Research Directors (ARD), Inc., will study abroad in Vienna this summer.

FAMU School of Business and Industry (SBI) students Emerson Naylor, Janelle Mosley and Larrynnee Holloman will all intern this summer with the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve System.

These FAMU students are bound to have an extraordinary summer.

After obtaining a fellowship with ABC news last year, Dawkins was offered an entry-level position with the company for the summer. In addition to working at ABC, Dawkins was recently named one of the Top 100 Best and Brightest by UWire.

“This is a humbling moment,” Dawkins said. “I am very honored to have been selected as the only representative of an HBCU on the list. I am fortunate because the School of Journalism and Graphic Communication has provided me with multimedia experiences that have helped me reach this point in my career.”

Dawkins is a senior broadcast journalism student from Sebring, Fla.

Founded in 1994, UWIRE is a service devoted to the needs of student journalists. Their aim is to identify and promote the brightest young content creators and deliver their work to a larger audience.

While Dawkins will be busy in New York, Payton will be headed overseas.

Payton, an agricultural sciences master’s candidate, presented a research poster on the functional analysis of key flavanoid genes in North American Muscadinia Variety “noble.” His research earned him first place in the competition shortly before he was scheduled to head overseas to study with world-renowned scientist Margit Laimer, Ph.D. Laimer is famous for her techniques to indentify genes in berries, techniques that are rarely used in the United States. Payton received a $7,000 grant from the University of North Reno that will fund his year-long trip to Vienna, Austria to conduct research with Laimer.

Looking back at his experience at FAMU, Payton, who majored in agribusiness and French as an undergraduate student, feels the FAMU College of Engineering Sciences Technology and Agriculture (CESTA) prepared him well for the future.

“CESTA is probably the most dynamic program at FAMU,” he said. “There are great opportunities here in very diverse fields. People tend to think of farms when they think about agriculture, but the field spans over so much opportunity.”

As Payton is researching in Vienna, SBI students Naylor, Mosley and Holloman will be working for the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C. The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States and provides the nation with a safe, flexible and stable monetary and financial system.

Naylor is part of the FAMU team that won the 2009 Ford HBCU Business Classic competition, while his colleagues, Mosley and Holloman, have held financial internships at Delaware River Port Authority and JPMorgan Chase, respectively.

Mosley is most excited about gaining some incite into the financial industry from more of a governmental standpoint, rather than corporate.

“This is such an interesting time to be part of the financial industry,” Mosley said. “I don’t think I would have had this opportunity if I did not attend FAMU, and SBI in specific. SBI requires students to have three internships prior to graduating. The coursework also allows us to develop our analytical skills, which is something that I plan to put into action this summer during my internship.”


Photo caption: Georgia Dawkins, a FAMU senior broadcast journalism student from Sebring, Fla., is enjoying her summer job at ABC News for Good Morning America and America this Morning.