Shenandoah University Partners With U.S. Army Corps of Engineers To Open More Doors For Students
New collaboration will provide more internship and job placement opportunities in variety of professional fields
Shenandoah University and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Transatlantic Middle East District (TAM) have teamed up to take steps toward providing more professional opportunities for students while enhancing TAM’s ability to recruit and retain a highly skilled and diverse workforce as well as prepare future leaders in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Shenandoah and TAM formalized the partnership on Monday, April 29, when SU President Tracy Fitzsimmons, Ph.D., and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Transatlantic Middle East District Commander Col. Philip Secrist III signed a memorandum of understanding in the Cecil Pruitt, Jr. Health & Life Sciences Building, Halpin Rotunda.
SU’s newest collaboration will support the university’s drive to provide internship opportunities for each of its students before they graduate. As part of the agreement, TAM will work with Shenandoah University to identify internship and job placement opportunities within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) across a variety of career fields; provide an inventory of career development programs; participate in SU’s recruitment activities and events, outreach efforts and professional development activities; identify opportunities with students through leadership and mentoring programs; and create an annual TAM event in the future Hub for Innovators, Veterans and Entrepreneurs (HIVE) on SU’s main campus in Winchester, Virginia, to educate students about internship or job placement opportunities.
It will also help explore a mentorship program for Shenandoah’s student veteran group as well as grant opportunities to support SU students and veterans. SU will facilitate a USACE forum in conjunction with the HIVE, and provide opportunities for Army Corps of Engineers leaders and subject matter experts to serve as speakers, facilitators and/or mentors in engineering, entrepreneurship and veteran events and activities.
“This partnership, which fosters the ability to create new pathways and internships for our students with the Army Corps of Engineers, is one more way we think about how we protect the future,” Dr. Fitzsimmons said. “And as the Army Corps of Engineers builds things strongly, we build things strongly. We build people strongly so that they can serve, whether it be for the Army Corps of Engineers or elsewhere. It is our distinct honor to serve with you all.”
As part of the new partnership, TAM, which is headquartered in Winchester, will collaborate with the Shenandoah Center for Immersive Learning (SCiL), SU’s state-of-the-art design studio and learning environment that specializes in augmented, virtual and extended reality. SCiL will lend its expertise to developing augmented/virtual reality programming as well as motion capture technology for the production of field demonstration and training simulations for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
SCiL co-directors Mohammad Obeid, Ph.D., and Nathan Prestopnik, Ph.D., gave a tour of the lab to visitors from TAM, who had the opportunity to try out some of the projects that students and faculty have been developing, following the MOU signing. SCiL, which is currently located on the garden level of the Pruitt HLSB, will move into the HIVE when the renovation of the former National Guard armory building is completed later this year. The HIVE – which will serve as a future-focused and boundary-breaking technology hub, innovation accelerator, and magnet location for tech business startup, expansion, and relocation – is scheduled to be completed in August 2024.
Secrist noted that the opportunity to work with SCiL and collaborate with Shenandoah University’s Center for Islam in the Contemporary World as well as the proximity of the two parties are examples of why the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Transatlantic Middle East District’s new partnership with Shenandoah is a natural fit.
“This really is an opportunity to mature this relationship in the future and see how it can grow,” Secrist said. “That’s what I always like about working in an academic environment. … You have a great perspective of things and new ideas. I’m really looking forward to infusing those new ideas and ways of doing business between Shenandoah University and the Army Corps of Engineers in this partnership.”
