Article and Figures Provided By ORTA/UxSRTO Team
Figure 1. Mary Solokas (UxSRTO/John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellow) talking to students at NOAA Hollings Scholarship Program Career Fair (Photo Credit: Chris Zimmer).
On June 1, 2023, Kenneth Vierra and Mary Solokas from the Office of Research, Transition, and Application (ORTA) and UxS Research Transition Office (UxSRTO), respectively, participated in a Career Fair for Hollings Scholarship Program students at the NOAA Science Center. They were joined by representatives from each of NOAA’s five line offices and uniformed service.
The Career Fair was part of an annual student orientation program that welcomes newly-awarded scholarship recipients of the Ernest F. Hollings and the Jose Serrano Educational Partnership Program with Minority Serving Institutions (EPP/MSI) Undergraduate Scholarship Programs. All scholarship recipients are selected through a national competitive process, and are sophomores/rising juniors in STEM fields at the time of the orientation. Representatives from NOAA’s line and staff offices discussed internship opportunities, career paths, and organizational structure. At the Career Fair, many line/staff offices were able to engage in informal conversations with the scholarship recipients, talking one-on-one about the students’ interests, office-specific programs, and internship opportunities. This year’s EPP/MSI recipients will undertake the first of their two paid internships during this summer (2023) with the second taking place in the summer of 2024. Hollings scholarship recipients will complete their paid internship in the summer of 2024.
At the Career Fair the students were very engaging and energetic, and they asked great questions about NOAA’s missions. Many were particularly interested in how NOAA uses uncrewed systems in research in the various line offices, as well as cloud computing, AI, and machine learning and how they are all used in research to aid in meeting mission needs. They also had an interest in the transition process in use within NOAA, especially how we facilitate developing road maps for NOAA innovative research, development, and new technologies to meet mission requirements of science, service, and stewardship to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts to yield societal and economic benefits.
Figure 2. Kenneth Vierra (ORTA) provided feedback on various questions that students had pertaining to opportunities and areas of interest (Photo Credit: Chris Zimmer).
In addition to engaging students one-on-one, ORTA and UxSRTO had a briefing that displayed in loop mode on a small monitor for the students to view. The presentation included videos of uncrewed systems in action and detailed recent NOAA UxS projects. It highlighted the vast potential for UxS to further NOAA’s mission and provided examples of how the different line offices are taking advantage of UxS capabilities to extend the range of times, locations, and conditions in which observations can be made, enabling persistent presence in harsh and remote environments in which it would otherwise too dangerous or costly for scientists to work.