by John Schutte Engineering and science students often face the same predicament as other novice job seekers—today’s high-tech employers want new hires with experience, but students and recent graduates can’t get experience until someone hires them.
At the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Human Effectiveness Directorate (AFRL/HE), where researchers routinely conquer difficult technical challenges, leaders are merging academic theory with on-the-job experience to overcome this employment paradox. Students earn a salary while conducting real-world research under the Consortium Research Fellows Program (CRFP), a partnership that develops advanced-degree professionals, encourages information exchange between government and academia, and contributes to ongoing technical research. The program began as a way for the best and brightest behavioral science graduate students to gain real-world experience at federal labs. It has evolved into a pathway to propel undergraduate and graduate students from academia into meaningful work environments and an incubator for future talent, according to program director Robert S. Ruskin, Ph.D. “One of the things I hope you heard is how the two worlds, education and research, meld in a way that is very productive,” Dr. Ruskin said after a dozen AFRL/HE participants enthusiastically praised the program at a recent luncheon. “I think that’s the key. This is a very productive relationship.” “This is a win-win-win situation,” Dr. Ruskin continued. “The students win because they come into places like AFRL to work, and I told them all they’re the luckiest people in this country.” Universities also benefit as students advance professionally and academically, often completing master’s theses or doctoral dissertations using program research. The government benefits through work performed on active projects by talented young researchers, while cultivating and evaluating potential future employees. Dr. Ruskin credited the vision and commitment of Dr. Hendrick W. Ruck, who devoted corporate funds to initiate the program upon becoming AFRL/HE director in May 2003. Since then, AFRL/HE has transitioned three students to full-time civil service positions, employed one as a full-time contractor, and steadily grown the financial commitment. Eighteen students currently are working with AFRL/HE at Wright-Patterson AFB, Brooks City-Base, Texas and Mesa, Ariz., sites.
Students may work 20 hours weekly during school and full-time in summers, for a total of 1300 hours annually. They earn from $16,000 to $35,000 annually depending upon actual hours. “This is the first and last time in the students’ lives they will be paid well to work and produce as much as they have,” Dr. Ruskin said. “When they go out into the real world, it’s a very different situation.” To further ease a student’s financial burden, universities may offer full or partial tuition remission, which both the University of Dayton (UD) and Wright State University (WSU) have done, according to Dr. Ruskin. UD graduate student Christin Grabinski’s experience is fairly typical of consortium students; the program gave her a valuable head start on her master’s degree. “I was able to join the consortium mid-semester before I even started my master’s work, so I already had two months of thesis research before I started classes,” said Grabinski, who is studying the biocompatibility of carbon nanofibers for bone cells under the mentorship of Saber Hussain, Ph.D., nanotechnology research scientist. “I’ve made a lot of progress on my thesis and accomplished a lot of research, collaborating with UD’s materials lab and the biotechnology branch at AFRL.” Mark Palumbo, a WSU graduate student, is fulfilling doctoral requirements with a project on distributed decision making for coordinating teams, mentored by Dr. Cheryl Batchelor of AFRL’s Logistics Readiness Branch. “What the program gives me most is the daily interaction with these professionals who work in the lab,” Palumbo said. “I would never have had that without this program. It helps us apply our academic knowledge.” “I’ll have four publications by the end of this year, two of which I was lead author on,” said WSU student Kendall Conrad, who is completing a master’s degree in human factors engineering. “Everything I’ve been doing here is directly applicable to any jobs I apply for, and that’s the type of experience that’s really hard to get.” In addition to AFRL/HE, program partners include the U.S. Army Research Institute for Behavioral and Social Sciences, the Defense Manpower Data Center, and the National Defense University . For more information contact: John Schutte
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