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Julia Packer, Technical
Intern at MITRE's Center for Air Force Command and Control.
Julia is currently a junior at Smith College. |
Internship Complements Academics
Julia Packer
August 2002
I came back for a reason—I liked
it!
Today's college students face a number of challenges as
they enter the workforce. In a tight job market, internships, co-ops
and other college work experience can be the ticket to that elusive
first interview. MITRE, a strong supporter of academic partnerships,
employs over 100 interns and co-ops annually. These students have
the opportunity to work on real-time problems for the Department
of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Internal
Revenue Service.
Weather is an uncontrollable and sometimes unpredictable variable
in military missions. That's why the weather mission area
of the Air Force is tasked with measuring, analyzing, and predicting
environmental conditions and evaluating how they will impact Air
Force and Army missions. Julia Packer, a junior at Smith College,
is spending her second summer as a technical intern for MITRE's
Center for Air Force Command and Control Federally Funded Research
and Development Center in Bedford, Massachusetts, and is a project
team member for the Air Force weather project.
The accumulation, evaluation, and dissemination of a wide variety
of data is key to the
weather project and Packer is working on software development for
the data. "My primary responsibility for the summer is putting the project roadmaps
into a database," she explains. "My two task leaders,
Tongder Teng and John Klingler, said, "Here's the material—come
back and show us what you have in a couple of weeks.' I really
like that approach. It's nice to be able to work on something
independently but still have the opportunity to ask questions when
I need help.
"One of the best parts of being at MITRE is the opportunity
to be a contributor to a project team," she adds. "Here
I am working with about 20 other people on a project MITRE's
been involved in for several years. I'm part of the project
meetings and I get to see how my work fits in with other people's
work. It's been great to see all the pieces come together.
"My experience at MITRE has been especially useful because
of the exposure to various types of engineering work," explains
Packer. "Since my degree program at Smith is a General Engineering
Science degree, my work here helps me focus on areas that I would
like to pursue academically. Plus, I've benefited from strong
mentoring relationships with several MITRE staff both when I'm here
and when I'm at school."
"I would definitely recommend MITRE internships to other
college students," continues Packer. "I came back for
a reason—I liked it! Everyone has been very nice and supportive.
I've had quite a few interesting work opportunities and learned
a lot in my two summers here."
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