Luther junior Elisabeth Vicente interns at the Ministry of Planning and Finance in Timor-Leste

Luther College junior Elisabeth do Rosário Vicente spent the summer as an intern at the Ministry of Planning and Finance in Timor-Leste in southeast Asia.

do Rosário Vicente, daughter of Mateus Vicente and Paulina do Rosário of Dili, East Timor, is a 2016 graduate of United World College Southeast Asia in Dover, Singapore. She plans to graduate from Luther in 2020 with majors in economics and data science.

At the Ministry of Planning and Finance in Timor-Leste, do Rosário Vicente worked to support the National Directorate of Economic Policy to develop and update models of macroeconomic analysis and projections, including forecasts that feed into the qualification of the fiscal resource envelope, or the expected resources, for the budget.

She also supported the Socioeconomic Department to monitor the trade balance of Timor-Leste in collaboration with the Central Bank of Timor-Leste, the General Directorate of Statistics and other competent public entities. do Rosário Vicente contributed in drafting and translating the 2018 state budget for Timor-Leste’s new government.

In addition to developing skills she already possessed, do Rosário Vicente quickly became a trusted member of the team and was entrusted with the same amount of work as her colleagues. She learned how “to become a better communicator and I was surprised by how quickly I built my network with others through various meetings I attended.” She also discovered that she “could work under pressure by doing urgent tasks and completing them on time.”

From her internship, do Rosário Vicente learned that both of her majors are “well correlated,” she said. After graduating from Luther, she plans to possibly to study macroeconomics or applied economics in graduate school.

Approximately 10 percent of Luther students take an internship for academic credit each academic year. The Luther College Career Center assists students with their internship search through resume preparation, networking, online internship searches, career fairs, on-campus interviewing and connecting the student to alumni through the college’s Alumni Internship Program. Students also meet with a faculty adviser prior to the internship to create an internship learning plan that includes learning goals and assessment benchmarks.

An internship work supervisor assists in the process by writing an evaluation of the student at the end of the internship. Students also complete a self-reflection form to help finalize the learning experience.

A national liberal arts college with an enrollment of 2,005, Luther offers an academic curriculum that leads to the Bachelor of Arts degree in more than 60 majors and pre-professional programs. For more information about Luther visit the college’s website: http://www.luther.edu.