Meet the PEP intern and fellow!

My name is Amanda Boettcher.  I am an International Research Fellow for the Peace Economy Project.  I received my B.A. in Mass Communication in 2006 from Mesa State College and I am currently working towards my M.A. in International Relations from Webster University.

During a class a couple semesters back, I heard the statistic that the U.S. spends more on it’s military than all other developed countries combined, while education is only allocated 2.2% of the total U.S. budget.  This outraged me! It lead me seek out opportunities to advocate and educate people about this issue, in hopes that we can create an economy not based on war.

I have been researching the U.S. connection to the rise of military spending in Asia.  I am currently researching the continuing issues with security and stability in the Asia, and how U.S. military spending it helping to keep Asian tensions high.

Hi! I’m Emily Robinson, the new Inter-Campus Coordinator for the Student Activist Coalition in St. Louis (STACS). I’m very excited to start making connections and meeting people who will help me get this position going. In this position, I’ll be bringing the leaders of campus organizations that aim to move the world forward together to help them organize their groups and communicate effectively so they can find the resources they need.

Right now, I’m in my second year at Maryville University majoring in English and minoring in political science. I moved here from Corpus Christi, Texas a little over three years ago and skipped a year so I could graduate from Marquette high school early. I’m the president of the Maryville campus human rights group and the vice president of our gay straight alliance. I’ve always had a strong interest in peace studies and writing and hope to put those both into good use through this internship.

So far, I have a few concrete goals and ideas to get things started. I’ll be constructing a facebook page and a twitter account for STACS so students have easy ways to keep connected. Also, I’m hoping to start building a blog that students can use as a database for issues, people to know, and organizations for their activism needs. Also, I hope to include student-written articles about their activist experiences, ideas, concerns, etc. In the Spring, I’ll be organizing a conference open to all of the STACS campus groups. I’m looking forward to building on those plans and forming plenty of new ones.