By Megan McCrum

Please send your thoughts and comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.  Thank you

Don't let the snowflakes fool you, it is never too soon to start thinking about summer. While many of us are wrapped up in Christmas preparations, college students are beginning to ponder their summer plans: what internship, course, or job will help them find their niche in the world. For pro-life students the National Right to Life Academy may be just the thing.

Since 2007 National Right to Life has run an intensive summer course to train college leaders to be more effective advocates for life. A comprehensive curriculum examines the full range of life issues, from human cloning to health care and denial of lifesaving medical treatment to abortion. Over a six-week period academy students become well versed to every threat to the dignity of human life, and become confident advocates of truly life-affirming solutions.

And they are putting what they learned to use. One academy graduate now serves as a pro-life lobbyist for his home state's NRLC affiliate where he puts his skills from the academy to work on a daily basis. Another is working toward becoming a nurse; she attended the academy in order to equip herself to defend life in the medical field, which has tragically forgotten its Hippocratic oath to preserve life and never take it.

Some academy alumni have come back to intern in the National Right to Life offices. Tristen Cramer, a former academy student who spent the past summer working on the academy staff, turned her pro-life passion into action at Cornell University.

In the fall of 2008 the Cornell Coalition for Life was censored from displaying the "Elena Campaign," a series of light-hearted education signs with pictures and text detailing the biological development of pre-born babies threatened by abortion. Utilizing the training and tips she'd learned at the academy, Tristen Cramer fired out a press release. "It borders on the absurd that the facilities staff at the College of Engineering finds photos depicting biological fetal development to be controversial and offensive," she wrote.

Pro-life students such as Tristen and others come to the academy with a heartfelt passion for defending the defenseless, and they leave with a foundation of knowledge, professional skills, and sense of strategy that amplifies their impact in the world. As one student said upon finishing the academy course, "I have the same convictions that I had before this summer but now I have all the information and practice I need--the statistics, arguments, and speaking techniques--to effectively articulate those convictions."

The National Right to Life Academy is a program that invests in the future. This summer's session runs June 23–August 6. Applications are due February 15. If you are interested in learning more about the academy, go to our web site at www.nrlc.org and click on the link for the academy or call (202) 626-8822.