Our first-class faculty inspire our students to grow every day through hands-on experiences, like impactful internships.
Emboldened by their broad learning experiences and supported by our first-class faculty, Gettysburg College students are making connections and gaining invaluable experience in the Pennsylvania state government through the James A. Finnegan Foundation Fellowship. A total of 27 Gettysburg students have been named prestigious Finnegan Fellows, all but two of which have come since 1987.
Established in 1960, the Finnegan Fellowship trains students in government and politics through a 10-week paid internship in senior offices located in the Pennsylvania state capital of Harrisburg. Hon. Thomas Dilts ’69, former superior court judge in New Jersey, and Debra Wallet ’73, a lawyer in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and current Finnegan Foundation board member, are among the more than two dozen Gettysburg graduates to have leveraged their experiences to pursue their own successful government careers.
Retired Political Science Prof. Shirley Anne Warshaw was a driving force behind Gettysburg’s continued representation in the Finnegan program, promoting the opportunity to her students so they could pursue the same lifechanging learning experiences she had as a former government employee. Previously serving under two Pennsylvania state governors and working with a state cabinet agency before coming to Gettysburg College, Warshaw served on the Finnegan Foundation’s board for decades and used her influence and knowledge to encourage her students to apply for the internship.
“Students get a firsthand look at both policy making and the politics of policy-making,” said Warshaw. “It is a real-world experience of the complexities of policy making at the very senior levels of state government, which essentially replicates what happens in the federal government.”
Through a First-Year Seminar taught by Warshaw in fall 2019, Caden Giordano ’23 gained confidence in his research and writing skills as a result of frequent essay writing and tutoring by Peer Learning Associates. With Warshaw’s support, he applied and was accepted into a Fellowship in the summer of 2021, where he engaged with various officials to learn the nuances of working for the state government. Giordano has carried his increased confidence and skills beyond graduation into his classes as a J.D. candidate at the Georgetown University Law Center.
"Being from Pennsylvania originally, I thought it would be a really cool idea to work for the Pennsylvania state government,” said Giordano, a political science and public policy double major at Gettysburg. "Between the Peer Learning Associates in my First-Year Seminar and Dr. Warshaw, I felt that I was able to prepare an essay I could submit thanks to the tools that they gave me in writing, research, and proofreading.”
As a first-year advisor to Marisa Balanda ’20, Warshaw saw similar potential for the Fellowship to kickstart her career in state government. After interning in the Department of Labor and Industry’s Bureau of Occupational and Industrial Safety (BOIS) in the summer of 2019, Balanda leveraged the government connections she made with the networking and professional development skills she learned at Gettysburg. The political science major worked in various legislative roles for the government until landing her newest position as the Deputy Policy Director at the Department of Transportation.
“Because my internship supervisor in BOIS cared about my long-term career interests, he coordinated my part-time work in the Department’s Legislative Affairs and Communications Offices,” said Balanda. “In these roles, I had the opportunity to learn from and connect with the department’s executive staff and to gain exposure to the type of work I do in my current job with PennDOT.”
Before being named a Finnegan Fellow in 2021, Owen Keenan ’21 spent time working under then Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in the Board of Pardons Office. The fellowship showed him a broader view about different positions in the state government. His joint experiences in government and as a political science and public policy double major propelled him into a role at the Legislative Policy and Research Office of the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus before attending Harvard Law School.
“Gettysburg prepared me well for it,” Keenan said. “I turned over work to the full-time employees and lightened their workload for two and a half months. All the reading and writing I did at Gettysburg prepared me for that.”
Warshaw guided Benjamin Pontz ’20 through several rounds of feedback on his application essay for the fellowship. In the summer of 2017, the political science and public policy double major interned at the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue in the Bureau of Process Reinvention, Innovation, and Strategic Management, helping seasoned professionals modernize Pennsylvania’s tax administration. Through the connections he made during his fellowship, Pontz presented his postgraduate thesis research to the Harrisburg Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority. He earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2024 and now works as a law clerk in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
“The Finnegan program emphasized three things: learning about the policy focus of your department, learning about how government and public policy worked, and meeting and making connections with state government leaders,” said Pontz. “Those three things map quite nicely onto a Gettysburg education, which focuses on learning deeply about an academic discipline, understanding how that discipline fits into a bigger picture, and connecting with people and institutions doing the sort of work that you want to do in the world.”
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By Katie Lauriello ’25 Photos provided by Benjamin Pontz ’20, Marisa Balanda ’20, and Owen Keenan ’21
Posted: 04/15/25