By Allison Weisser |

Internships have become more important to college students preparing to enter the workforce and for people looking to explore new careers. According to LinkedIn, college interns are almost 25 percent more likely than non-interns to start a full-time position within six months of graduation. College students are taking advantage of the opportunities offered by organizations to gain valuable work experience and develop a network of mentors. Internships are also valuable to the organizations that sponsor them. Recently, Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors (PEO IEW&S) hosted several interns from multiple programs.

Cheryl Litteral, Human Capital Strategist PEO IEW&S, was brought in to develop and facilitate talent management and talent acquisition programs, which is a key goal for the PEO. She explained that internships within the government are “any sort of position that’s developmental in nature. This year we utilized both formal and informal intern programs.” Some programs are funded through the Department of Defense or the Department of the Army to assist in hiring and developing harder to fill jobs, like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)acquisition positions. According to all who participated, the experience was overwhelmingly positive. The programs were The Defense Civilian Training Corps (DCTC), Workforce Recruitment Program (WRP), DoD College Acquisition Internship Program (DCAIP), Research for Intelligence & Security Challenges (RISC) Initiative internship program, and U.S. Military Academy’s Academic Individual Advanced Development (AIAD) program as well as Ph.D. Program.

DCTC selected four interns to participate in a pilot program with Project Manager Cyber and Space (PM C&S) which is responsible for fielding offensive cyber solutions. DCTC prepares future DoD civilians through a targeted curriculum, hands-on-learning experiences, and cohort-based internships. Wendi Duffy, Product Support Manager for PM C&S, said they were approached by DCTC to host a pilot program. She said “I’m a part of the generation when we graduated college, cyber didn’t exist. The program has been a great way to bridge your mid-level career people and your senior people with the youth of tomorrow.” The DCTC interns were able to work on a real-life product that will be developed further by the next group of interns and their mentors.

Jackson Migala, Cybersecurity & Digital Criminology major at Purdue said “I would say it definitely helped to give me a glimpse into the DoD workforce itself, actually getting to meet with leadership, be part of a team and work on a project. We were responsible for building a tool for them to use that will check for different compliances with security guidelines and make sure that everything is up to date.” The other DCTC students who interned with C&S are Faith Jones, Cybersecurity Analytics and Management major, Virginia Tech, Josemari Roque, Computer Engineering (Networking & Cyber), Virginia Tech, Sangmuk Kang, Cybersecurity Analytics and Management and Public Health Double major, Virginia Tech.

Project Director Sensors-Aerial Intelligence (PD SAI) an organization responsible providing tactically relevant aerial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (AISR) sensors that maintain battlespace awareness and superiority hosted an intern from the WRP, which connects federal and select private sector employers with students and recent graduates with disabilities, including disabled Veterans. Carey Sunderland was selected to support the Multi-Doman Sensing System office. After serving in the Marines, he joined the Army Reserve and began attending University of Maryland Global Campus where he studies software development and security with a minor in computer science. He finishes his degree this month. He said, “so far this experience has shown me a lot more from a bigger holistic view of the military, seeing how the entire acquisition life cycle goes through and seeing it from start to end provides a lot more perspective of how we support our troops.”

His mentor, Marc Busala, the Technical Chief for PD SAI, appreciates the value of the fresh insight to solving complex problems that interns bring with them, while learning and developing the necessary skills to be successful in their futures. It is simply not just a benefit to the intern. Busala said “it’s important for us to have a bench that is deep in understanding where these programs are from and the life cycles that’s associated with it. It is also a formal way of doing the knowledge transfer and making sure that we’re building up that bench. They come in with a new talent, fresh look, no inhibitions, not carrying the baggage of previous jobs. And also from a generational perspective, they’re more aligned with the users that we’re delivering these products to.” Sunderland was able to bring new energy to the organization while also working on real life programs where he was able to follow the development of a requirements document through the source selection of a product, the testing involved and the systems engineering processes that are involved for testing.

Project Manager Intelligence Systems and Analytics (PM IS&A), responsible for critical Army Intelligence Foundation modernization initiatives, also hosted several interns this summer. PM IS&A intern Elaine Nguyen of University of Maryland Baltimore County completed her summer internship program with the Project Linchpin team. Under the guidance of Project Linchpin subject matter experts, they assisted in designing and developing a tracking system which offered real-time reporting, visualization tools, and external partner communication. Nguyen participated through the DoD College Acquisition Internship Program (DCAIP), which requires organizations to ensure a position for the eligible student once they complete the internship. Michael Boisclair and David Zikel participated in the RISC program. Competitively selected RISC interns from the University of Maryland work on real security and intelligence problems posed by the government.

West Point Cadet, Malaya Castro, completed a two-week internship through the U.S. Military AIAD program. The AIAD program provides cadets global opportunities to engage with industry and government agencies and provides them an opportunity to build relationships while being challenged in a real-world environment.

Litteral is looking forward to continuing using the internship programs. “We’ve already been asked if we want to have slots available for other formal intern programs that help us increase hiring of STEM positions and acquisition positions.” She estimates PEO IEW&S hosting about 20 interns in FY25 across many different programs and job categories. In addition to the internships leveraged in FY24, she anticipates hosting interns from Army Fellows Program (AFP), Student Intern Program (Summer Hires), Army Presidential Management Fellows Program and Developmental Employees. “We hope to build our bench even more, allow different perspectives into the organization and give our current leaders the ability to train and develop new talent to be the future leaders.”