Mentors Point the Way to STEM for Interns at NASA-JPL

The opportunity for interns to "dare mighty things" at JPL wouldn't exist without the people who bring them to the Laboratory in the first place—the people known as mentors.

Photo by Kim Orr

Client: NASA JPL Education

The Brief: Taking a new approach to telling the story of JPL’s internship programs, I pitched and wrote this piece to spotlight the mentors who make these opportunities possible, opening doors, guiding students’ career paths, and helping them contribute meaningfully to NASA missions. The story offered a different perspective on the program, showing its impact on both students and the professionals who support them.

Excerpt:

Each year, 1,000 students come to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for internships at the place where space robots are born and science is made. Their projects span the STEM spectrum, from engineering the next Mars rover to designing virtual-reality interfaces to studying storms on Jupiter and the possibility of life on other planets. But the opportunity for students to "dare mighty things" at JPL wouldn't exist without the people who bring them to the Laboratory in the first place – the people known as mentors.

A community of about 500 scientists, engineers, technologists and others serve as mentors to students annually as part of the internship programs managed by the JPL Education Office. Their title as mentors speaks to the expansiveness of their role, which isn't just about generating opportunities for students, but also guiding and shaping their careers.

"Mentors are at the core of JPL's mission, pushing the frontiers of space exploration while also guiding the next generation of explorers," says Adrian Ponce, who leads the team that manages JPL's internship programs. "They are an essential part of the career pipeline for future innovators who will inspire and enable JPL missions and science."

Planetary scientist Glenn Orton has been bringing students to JPL for internships studying the atmospheres of planets like Jupiter and Saturn since 1985. He keeps a list of their names and the year they interned with him pinned to his office wall in case he's contacted as a reference. The single-spaced names take up 10 sheets of paper, and he hasn't even added the names of the students he's brought in since just last year.