A four-week summer program for promising high school seniors, SPS immerses its students in the worlds of government and public policy, offering opportunities to meet the best and brightest of both fields. Miner's duties range from Web consulting to reassuring concerned parents and helping students find lost wallets. "I basically do anything that comes across my desk," he said.

Miner said he was amazed by the bright and idealistic young stars of this past summer's program. "They're such good kids," he said. "They're just like other kids, but they're also interested in helping people and effecting change." The 29 students in the program included the president of the Montgomery Million Mom March Youth Chapter 2002, a Teen Jeopardy champion, a Habitat for Humanity volunteer in Paraguay. And the roster of people on the students' daily schedule, which Miner helped organize, reads like a page from President Bush's daily planner. It includes lobbyists, U.S. senators and representatives, former presidential speechwriters and CIA inspectors general, to name only a few. "It gives these kids time to meet people like this," Miner said, "so they realize that these people don't have something that the kids don't have--they just worked hard to get where they are."

But Miner and his students didn't just spend four weeks popping in and out of government buildings; their classroom took other forms as well. One of the summer's most memorable occasions for Miner was a mock official dinner, at which Albright was the guest of honor. Also attended by guests such as former White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, the dinner taught the students the social graces crucial to survival within the political circles of Washington. "Madeleine Albright was by far one of the coolest parts of the program," Miner said. "She was funny and profound in her descriptions of her experiences as secretary of state. I walked out of there with the biggest smile on my face."

He found that the skills he honed at Colby served him well as he navigated uncharted waters during SPS's inaugural year. "A lot of the education at Colby is not having an answer that's the end, but finding a new idea of a larger understanding," he said.

When his tenure at St. Albans ends this winter (he was hired until February), Miner hopes to gain a "larger understanding" of the world on a Peace Corps program. If accepted, he hopes to work in sub-Saharan Africa as an advisor to local communities, helping them implement and maintain productive trout fisheries.

And the long-term future?

He's pondering it, of course, and while he hasn't fixed on a particular path, Miner does have a definition of success, for himself and his young charges: Success, he says, is finding a way to both maneuver through life, "and hold on to your ideals."

-- Braxton Williams '99