News

Area College Students to Share Internship Experience via MySpace

01/11/08

Six area college students will share stories and images from their first-of-a-kind internship experience working at one of the U.S. Department of Energy's ten national laboratories through a daily blog at http://www.myspace.com/pnnl.

Five Clark State Community College students and one Wilberforce University student were chosen to participate in a five-week internship at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington. They and a Clark State professor left Saturday, Jan. 5 to work side-by-side with world renowned scientists.

Bridget Harper, one of the Clark State students said, “The people we speak with every day are so well established in what they do, and that makes it all the more desirable to want to go as far as I can with my education.”

Avetec, PNNL and the colleges are piloting a program that will bring community college students to the laboratory and immerse them into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers in research, high performance computing, and highly specialized engineering to PNNL. The students will work with the PNNL staff on various projects identified by the lab and will have late afternoon and evening seminars with their professor. Upon return to campus, their professor will work with them to make presentation to other students about their experience and to continue their learning and pursuit of an advanced STEM career. PNNL researchers have committed to mentoring the students.

Avetec is funding the students (travel, housing, stipend), and the colleges have agreed to offering a unique course that will allow the students to receive credit for the course. A research/evaluation plan will be designed to see whether the model accelerates STEM learning by the community college students and increases their entry into STEM careers. If the results of the pilot merit continuation of the program, the organizations will work together to seek funding to sustain the program and possibly expand to other colleges serving students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds or from regions which have been highly dependent on rapidly disappearing blue collar manufacturing employment.