Interns at Sandia's National Collegiate Pulsed Power Research Institute in Albuquerque
Lab Interns Are Future Lab Scientists
June / July 2006
Volume 4 Number 3
Every summer at about this time, they descend on businesses nationwide. Starry-eyed, eager to please, and looking to make their first mark on the professional world, the interns arrive. For some business owners, high school and college-age interns are a source of cheap labor who never make it past the status of coffee runner and copier master. But in the national laboratories, they play a different and more important role.
Interns are being groomed to be the next generation of lab scientists. While their first summer on the job is often a ramping-up period, after that, they become contributing and productive members of research teams. Most important, for the labs, they become an experienced pool of labor from which to draw.
National laboratories such as Lawrence Livermore, Sandia and Los Alamos have offered some sort of internship program almost from the beginning, say lab officials. But over the years, the type and number of internships, as well as the sophistication of programs have increased. Some labs now provide educational and professional development opportunities to high school kids, undergraduate students, graduate students and postdocs alike.
"We've always brought in summer students," says Barry Goldman, internship manager at Lawrence Livermore, adding, "that's because it's a recruiting tool."
Upwards of 500 interns take part in Lawrence Livermore's summer programs each year. Sandia boasts about 800, and Los Alamos has roughly 1,400 interns throughout the year. They fill a gamut of positions, from administrative to technical. Most take part in summer programs, while others get their professional fix throughout the year. In technical internships, students are typically teamed with a seasoned mentor in their field of study and directly assist in research projects.
Pay is based on level of education and the complexity of research work being performed. It usually increases incrementally from one year to the next. Pay rates also take into consideration cost of living. Goldman says junior and senior level college students may make from $16 to $25 per hour at Lawrence Livermore. Department of Defense labs rarely house interns directly.
Students also often attend conferences and tours of other lab facilities throughout the country. Some programs require they prepare and present a paper at a symposium at the end of the summer.
Dr. Beverly Berger, director of university partnerships with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), says internship programs play an important role in helping to meet "critical skills" needs. She says in 2004, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Interagency Working Group on Critical Workforce Needs, led by NNSA, collected data across the defense, homeland security and intelligence communities on hundreds of critical skills and the expected difficulty in finding U.S. citizens with those skills over the next five to ten years.
"NNSA is committed to actively developing U.S. citizens with specific, at-risk skills," she says. "NNSA and its laboratories and plants will work with universities, including minority educational institutions so that students will seamlessly transition from coursework and internships to employment."
Internships also help offset attrition rates. Berger says 21 percent to 42 percent of the technical staff in the nuclear weapons program is eligible for retirement. Up to 59 percent of the technical staff is eligible for retirement in some sections of the weapons program.
Most say the strength of the programs, for students and lab officials alike, is they offer up-and-comers real life and useful experiences.
"They are contributing to productivity by the second summer," says Dominique Wilson, consultant with the Critical Skills Development Program at Sandia. "One of the things many students say is that they're surprised to be treated as a colleague." She says many interns publish papers during their time at Sandia. This is useful to the scientific community at large and can help interns get into graduate and other schools.
Tracie Durbin completed two internships at Sandia when she was working on her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering. She completed a third during graduate school.
"The nice thing is that students are given real work to do, not just surf the internet all day," says Durbin. She says it's also beneficial to be surrounded by PhDs working in the field and not just in an academic setting. They can provide real-world advice and insight, she says. As a result of the internships, Sandia paid for Durbin's graduate school. She was hired as a full-time member of the technical staff of the aerosol sciences division last July.
Another important thing the internship programs accomplish is exposing up-and-comers to lab culture, part of which is the often times long and drawn out process of obtaining security clearances. Once interns have obtained these clearances, the process of being hired into a full-time position and getting to work is cut significantly.
Of the hundreds of interns that go through the Sandia program each year, Wilson estimates the conversion rate to eventual full-time employment to be 17 percent.
Goldman estimates Lawrence Livermore's program has a 30 percent conversion rate.
And approximately 25 percent of current University of California employees working at Los Alamos are former students or post-docs, according to Dave Foster, acting program manager of the Education and Postdoc Office at Los Alamos.
Goldman says even if interns are not hired full-time, they act as a great word-of-mouth marketing tool to attract future students. And, if they have a good experience, those not hired full-time may also prove to be great private industry partners.
Foster says Los Alamos also reaches out to thousands of youngsters each year by conducting more than 20 science and education activities. The LANL Foundation has provided hundreds of college scholarships since 1997 and millions of dollars in grants to support the enhancement of the educational environment.
"It's important to catch kids early in their educational career," he says.
Eric Billingsley is a freelance writer based in Albuquerque.
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