In a June 24th press release, Virginia Law announced that the number of its graduates from the class of 2010 entering positions in public service nearly doubled from the previous year. Seventeen members of the class of 2009 graduated and went on to work within the federal government but, according to the school’s Mortimer Caplin Public Service Center, that number rose to thirty in Virginia Law’s most recent group of graduates. Part of this rise may be, in part, a result of concerted effort on the part of both the Public Service Program and alumni to prepare students for the application process to the Presidential Management Fellowship Program. Finalists from the previous year returned to campus to share their experiences with graduating students, which resulted in a leap from 2009′s sixteen applicants to 2010′s fifty. The number of accepted students also grew from four in 2009 to sixteen in 2010. Accepted students will enter a number of different federal spheres, including the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs.
In addition to the sixteen fellowship winners, others will be entering a number of other federal positions. Allen Abrams, for example, will join the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General Program. Other classmates will begin their work in a variety of governmental departments, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The school’s assistant dean for public service, Yared Getachew, was quoted as saying “When you look at where our alumni are, you can’t help but admire their level of service for the nation in all branches of federal, state and local government.”
