The Maryland Transportation Authority is kicking off a new internship program this summer that will give local college students a role in rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The first group of 10 interns, coming from Johns Hopkins, Morgan State and the University of Maryland, will be hired as temporary employees for the MTA starting June 2. They’ll help the full-time team review designs for safety, test soil for base-building stability and more.
“I don't want them to just be sitting around twiddling their thumbs, bored out of their mind,” said Jason Stolicny, deputy director of project development. “That doesn't do any of us any good. We want to make sure that they're engaged and they feel like they're doing interesting and meaningful work.”
Stolicny said since the Key Bridge collapsed last March, starting to rebuild has felt like an all-encompassing task.
“We've been tasked with rebuilding this bridge and doing it as quickly as we can, and making sure we're keeping the cost of the project and the impacts of the project in check,” he said. “And sometimes we lose focus of the bigger picture of the transportation industry, making sure we're creating those opportunities for the folks who are now coming up through our local colleges.”
Stolicny said this summer serves as a pilot of the internship program, one he’s hoping will inform how they run it going forward. He said a key measure of success will be whether interns reapply or join MTA as full-time employees after they graduate.
Cristian Mena is a rising junior at University of Maryland Baltimore County majoring in mechanical engineering. He said the community impact of the project motivated him to apply.
“It spiked my interest instantly, because it's such a well-known tragedy that happened in our area,” he told WYPR. “So I was really excited to be a part of the team and join the rebuild.”
Mena also said he’s hoping to gain civil and structural engineering skills that he can’t learn at his university.
“My school doesn't offer civil engineering or structural engineering, so I had to go down the mechanical path,” he said. “But I’m open to anything, to transportation. And I love bridges.”
Bobbie Lowe-Hunt and Joshua Monmouth, both Morgan State civil engineering students, said they’re ready to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to real-world experience.
“I’m also looking forward to networking with professionals and just learning anything that can be learned,” Lowe-Hunt added.
