How students can get a jump start working in STEM at Robins Air Force Base

ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE — Robins Air Force Base is investing in the next generation of scientists and engineers through two intensive summer programs that offer students far more than a line on their resume.

The SMART Program and the JumpStart Internship Program give Middle Georgia students paid, hands-on experience supporting real Air Force missions, and, for many, a direct path to a full-time career on base.

A 20-year pipeline: The SMART program

Although it’s relatively new to some local students, the SMART Scholarship-for-Service program has been a Department of War mainstay for two decades.

“It’s not a new program,” said Adrienne Latimer, a program manager on base. “It’s actually a Department of War program. It has been going on for over 20 years.”

SMART is open to college students in STEM fields as well as current employees on base. Scholars can have their tuition paid, receive a stipend, and complete summer internships at installations like Robins. For employees, the program can also cover salary while they’re in school.

“If they actually work on base, then they’re considered retention scholars,” Latimer said. “They can actually get their scholarship paid for, and even get their salary paid for while they’re on base, while they’re in school as well.”

The program is highly selective. Latimer said thousands of applicants apply each year across Army, Navy, Air Force and other defense agencies and only a fraction are chosen. Applicants must maintain at least a 3.0 GPA, be able to obtain a security clearance, and be available to work during the summer.

This year, Robins is hosting 14 SMART interns, all college students in STEM fields. They arrived around May 18 and will stay until early August.

All are placed in science and engineering roles, from software engineering to aerospace and mechanical projects and even supply chain.

“The interns, they actually contribute, they have hands-on experience,” Latimer said. “They’re given hands-on experience to do the jobs that the supervisors have selected them to do…they’re actually giving to the mission on base.”

SMART scholars are expected to return to Robins after they graduate.

“That’s one of the requirements of the program,” Latimer said. “Once they graduate from college, then they do work full time on base.”

While SMART is a nationwide program, Robins’ implementation has a strong local focus.

“For Middle Georgia, for the SMART program, majority of the scholars are from Georgia that work on Robins Air Force Base,” Latimer said.

The base partners with local colleges and universities and recruits across Middle Georgia and the broader Southeast. That strategy has an economic impact as well as a workforce one.

“If the student is coming from, say, another state, then it’s bringing that particular student to Middle Georgia, which helps with the revenue,” Latimer said.

Latimer, an engineer who interned herself while in college, said she hopes participants remember more than just the technical work.

“The things that I took away from my internship was the experience itself, the people that I met, the networks that I gained over the years. I’m still connected to them,” she said. “That’s what they will actually remember from the internship.”

‘JumpStart’ for high school graduates

If SMART catches students in college, JumpStart reaches them even earlier, right after high school.

The JumpStart Internship Program is designed for graduating high school seniors from Middle Georgia who plan to major in computer science, computer engineering or electrical engineering.

“The goal of this program is to promote interest in STEM disciplines and develop a steady pipeline of employees for Robins Air Force Base,” said Katherine Ficklin, the program’s director.

Started in 2021 within the 402nd Software Engineering Group, the program runs eight to 10 weeks each summer. It’s based at Project Synergy, an off-base facility created to give software teams and interns more freedom with tools and networks than they might have behind the base firewall.

“We wanted a space where we can have the freedom to build, create, innovate,” Ficklin said.

This year, JumpStart hosts 44 interns, 26 freshmen and 18 sophomores, all from Middle Georgia counties including Houston, Bibb, Pulaski and Peach.

JumpStart is structured as a two-year experience.

Freshman interns start with a Python boot camp, gradually building their coding skills each week. In the afternoons, they rotate through soft-skills and college readiness lessons, including professional etiquette, public speaking, finance and budgeting, and time management.

Sophomore interns, many who completed the program as freshmen, move into more independent work that blends hardware and software.

“Right now they’re in class doing motherboards and playing with the resistors and doing all the things incorporated in the hardware and the software part together,” Ficklin said. “It’s more getting them ready to actually sit on a project inside the squadrons, where they will have a project manager and deliverables they have to provide.”

At the end of each summer, interns give formal presentations on their work. Squadron leaders from across the software engineering group attend and take note.

“It’s kind of like an interview process,” Ficklin said. “Squadron directors are also evaluating them…who could possibly be working in their squadron in a few years.”

After two summers in JumpStart, students “graduate” into the Embedded Intern Program, where they’re placed directly inside squadrons to work on real-world projects. That program is coordinated by Ashley Westmoreland.

Competitive and selective

Interest in JumpStart is high, and growing.

Last year, Ficklin said, about 70 students applied for the freshman class. Only 26 were accepted.

“It’s not necessarily a whole application process, but there is an application packet,” she said.

Applicants submit a resume, cover letter, two letters of recommendation and responses to video interview questions before being invited for an in-person interview.

Students can only enter as freshmen the summer after they graduate high school. There is no direct entry as a sophomore; those spots are reserved for returning interns.

As the program has matured, Ficklin said the team has tightened its focus.

“When the program started, it was kind of open to anyone…who was interested in going to college, and our goal was to kind of influence them to go into STEM,” she said. “Now we’ve made it a little bit harder to get in. We clearly focus on STEM majors so that we can make sure that they are ready to effectively perform in our squadrons.”

Both SMART and JumpStart require strong academics, but Ficklin emphasized that grades alone aren’t enough.

“We need to see a more well-rounded person,” she said. “We work in teams a lot, so soft skills are something that we really harp on.”

Among the qualities she and her team look for: adaptability, initiative, collaboration, accountability, analytical thinking, innovation and integrity.

“Soft skills, communication, confidence,” Ficklin said. “Be confident in who you are, speak confidently, introduce yourself confidently…Once you apply, you’re competing against other students, so you want to make sure that you stand out, and soft skills are the way to do that.”

A ‘fresh perspective’ for the mission

For Robins, the benefit isn’t just future hires. Interns contribute immediately to the base’s mission, since the 402nd Software Engineering Group seeks to hire nearly 200 engineering professionals a year.

“This program is a feeder into our pipeline to make sure that we always have engineers coming up,” Ficklin said.

Interns also bring a different lens to long-standing technical problems.

“They bring a new, fresh perspective,” Ficklin said. “The students come in, for example, knowing all about AI, how to implement it, how useful it is, the different tools that are available, whereas we have to take classes to learn that.”

That perspective, she said, helps Robins “stay on top of our game and provide the best technology and the best product to the mission and the warfighters.”

Security, structure and support networks

For many young people, their first surprise is security.

“They were really overwhelmed with the amount of security that we have,” Ficklin said.

Once on the job, students begin to see how their “little piece” of work fits into a much larger picture, from software tools to systems that support airmen and aircraft.

They also gain a network.

Ficklin said one former intern recently told her he learned “more in one week” at the program than in an entire semester-long class. Others talk about the friendships and the comfort of entering college with people they already know.

“You get to go to college with a built-in friend already, because you’ve met them, you worked with them all summer,” she said.

Events, including a recent base-wide intern meetup that drew more than 90 interns, help them connect across units and schools.

“I hope they remember that we prepared them for college,” Ficklin said. “That they learned the basics, the foundation of professionalism that will help them throughout their entire life.”

Building Middle Georgia’s STEM future

For both Latimer and Ficklin, the goal is the same: keep local talent local, give students meaningful experience, and strengthen the workforce that supports the base and the region.

“We have great talent in Middle Georgia,” Ficklin said. “We just need to tap into them and get them to stay here. Middle Georgia is a great place to live, work and play.”

With SMART and JumpStart, Robins Air Force Base is betting that early, intensive exposure to real-world engineering, and a strong support network, will pay off for students, the base and Middle Georgia for years to come.