At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the summer season begins with the summer solstice and the arrival of summer interns. This year, JPL's Education Office is providing opportunities for more than 200 students to participate in programs at the Lab. The academic levels range from high school through postdoctoral studies. The Minority Education Initiatives group will host more than 50 of these students, who will be participating in the Minority Initiatives Internship Program. This program serves as an umbrella for a group of programs targeting all students except those at the he postdoctoral level. The interns either attend Minority Serving Institutions or are a part of a population from which there is limited representation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers.
SpaceSHIP (Space Summer High School Internship Program) is a six-week program targeting high school students who live within 50 miles of JPL. Over the six-week period, each intern gets the opportunity to work with a JPL scientist or engineer in the area linked to his or her ultimate career goals. They also participate in several activities designed to give them exposure to career options in space science. This year, 16 interns will participate in SpaceSHIP.
The Alliance for Learning and Vision for Underrepresented Americans (ALVA), JPL Scholars, Motivating Undergraduates in Science and Technology (MUST) and ACCESS are programs designed to offer internships to undergraduate and graduate students attending Minority Serving Institutions and to students with disabilities. Interns can spend 10 weeks working with a team of JPL scientists and engineers in areas related to their academic majors. The students from cities outside of Los Angeles County live together in a dormitory or residential housing and carpool into work daily. All are afforded a real taste of life as a JPL employee, right down to the challenge of finding a shady parking space in the morning! This year the student traveling the longest distance for an internship will come from Barrow, Alaska!
All of the summer interns will participate in a series of activities designed to give them an opportunity to hear about all of the NASA- and JPL-related research being carried out across the laboratory. They will also travel to NASA's Goldstone Complex in California's Mojave Desert to get a firsthand view of the Deep Space Network, which provides communication with spacecraft throughout the solar system. Finally, each intern will present an overview of his or her accomplishments during a series of formal presentations to friends, family and their JPL colleagues.
For more information on how to join the JPL community of summer scholars, please visit:
