Summer Undergraduate Research Experience: A Holistic Approach to Recruit, Train, Pipeline, and Prepare Students for Professional Careers in the NOAA Mission Enterprise

With ever changing and evolving economy, employers seek for inter-personal skills besides professional and technical talents, skills, and experience in their potential employees. The job market is a competitive one, and often is a tough learning curve for recent graduates. Internships, experiential research, and training opportunities have become critical part of the college experience for most students. However, recent studies and surveys reveal that it is critically important to transform and align our education training to include and focus not only academic-driven workforce but also non-academic STEM workforce. Through this paper, the authors will share some of the experiential opportunities created through a major funding from NOAA Educational Partnership Program with Minority Serving Institutions. These initiatives have helped not only built synergistic partnerships and collaborative engagement between Federal, Academia and Private Sectors but also helped students attain future workforce-related skill-sets through professional advancement and career related experiential training.