Name: Andrew Swope; Institution; Everett Community College; Program: Community College Internships Program; Education Level: Undergraduate Student
November 12, 2024
minute read time
Andrew Swope was a student at Everett Community College in 2022 when he heard about the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science’s Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS) programs. The WDTS offers six core programs, including the one that appealed to Swope—Community College Internships. Like other WDTS offerings, the Community College Internships (CCI) program provides opportunities to expand technical skills and expertise while exploring career pathways in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
It was really cool, being able to work in an actual, professional STEM environment. There's a lot of interesting stuff that you never hear about in a classroom unless you're actually in the environment.
He soon learned there was a national laboratory practically in his backyard: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) about 200 miles away in Richland, Washington. And Swope learned PNNL is a global leader in materials science, one of his areas of career interest.
In the summer of 2023, Swope found himself working in the lab of Ankit Roy, a computational scientist in PNNL’s Materials Dynamics group. By the time the 10-week internship had ended, Swope had contributed to two projects and was listed as a co-author on a study funded by the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy and published in Materialia, “Chemical composition based machine learning model to predict defect formation in additive manufacturing.”
Swope returned to Everett Community College, located north of Seattle, with a clarified vision for his future. That vision included a return to PNNL.
Swope applied to CCI again in late 2023 and was again accepted to work at PNNL, which is located in south-central Washington State, along the Columbia River. PNNL is one of 17 DOE national laboratories.
Swope, with his community college degree, will soon enroll at the University of Washington, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. But first, he has another internship. He will be working at the Seattle-area office of Blue Origin.