GE Aerospace Intern Program Leadership
Honors Experience #4
At the time of writing this, I am on my 3rd (and then technically 4th, as well) co-op rotation at GE Aerospace. Once I am done, I will have worked with the company as an intern for a total of almost two years combined. During this time, I have gained so much from the co-op program outside of growing in my technical skills through my engineering work. The co-op program has given me countless opportunities to grow my network and improve on my professional skills in many ways. This semester, I have been given the chance to take on a leadership position with the Intern Creative Team within the co-op program and give back to this incredible program that has given me so much already. Succeeding in this role and helping to further improve the current co-op program while setting others up for success in their roles is very important to me.
This experience will help me greatly in my journey toward becoming a global citizen scholar. It is providing me with a route to engage with my community of co-ops at GE and hone my leadership skills in a way that I have not had the opportunity to before. In this role, I will strive to prioritize inclusion and make it my goal to foster a space of positive community engagement amongst all of the co-ops. Both of these ideas are pillars of what it means to be a global citizen scholar, and I think that this experience aligns very well with the goals and competencies of the Honors Program.
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Throughout the duration of this experience, I kept a journal as a method of on-going reflection and to track my progress and thoughts through the weeks. Below you can find monthly recaps of these journal entries. These entries also helped me to gather my final thoughts and reflections which I summarized in the video I have linked below. In sharing my findings with my experience mentor as well as the future cohorts of the Intern Creative Team, I hope to create a lasting impact with the work that I have done and ensure that all of the progress made was well documented and passed along.
Final Reflection:
March Recap
Through the month of March, the focus of the ICT was gearing up to launch our Ambassador Program for the incoming cohort of Summer 2024 interns! This whole process required a lot of hard work and certainly taught me a lot about what it takes to be a leader. We had to start off by outlining what we wanted the program to look like, and what we wanted the interns to be able to get out of it. In particular, we wanted to make sure that our focus was to prioritize involvement and interaction from the incoming interns. It can be quite difficult to create a sense of community sometimes within college students, especially when they come together from all over the place. Knowing the intimidation of starting a new internship and meeting hundreds of people for the first time, I wanted to make sure I could provide a safe space for people to find some community in the co-op program at GE. With these ideas in mind, we set forth and planned events to get interest from the current interns about becoming ambassadors, and ended up getting around 70 people to become ambassadors. A whole new challenge presented itself, however, when we found out that we would have a whopping 400(!!!) incoming summer interns to match with ambassadors! Luckily, thanks to the initiative of most of our ambassadors willing to take on 7+ interns, we were able to make it work. This process taught me so much about taking challenges head on and being able to adjust when things don't quite go as you originally planned. Moving into April, we will be focused on planning informational and social events to help prepare the summer interns for their rotations beginning in May. I look forward to working through any challenges as they come up!
April Recap
After working through the initial set up of the Ambassador Program in March, myself and the team continued to work hard throughout April to ensure that things ran smoothly for all of the Ambassadors and their mentees. We made sure to provide as many resources as we could to help them answer any questions they got, and set up channels to allow people to communicate with each other throughout the semester. During all of this, I was also taking care of communicating with my mentees, answering their questions and doing get-to-know calls with those who were interested. Apart from continuing to run the Ambassador Program, during April we started working on planning two separate events to host for the summer interns. The first was an informational session where we introduced them to the Intern Creative Team and the Professional Development Committee (another intern group), told them more about what each team does, and how they can join when they start. The goal was to give the interns a better idea of how they can get involved and make the most of their rotations in more than just their technical roles. The other event was a fun networking and social session where we created an activity for the interns to do while they could meet and interact with the people that they would be seeing throughout their rotations. Both of these sessions required a lot of planning and figuring out the logistics of inviting so many people from outside of the organization. In the end both were a great success! We didn't have as many people join as we might have hoped, but we had to recognize that we were hosting these events when a lot of the interns are still in school. Overall, despite that setback, we accomplished what we set out to do with this rotation.
May Recap
In the beginning of May, we finished out the Ambassador Program for the spring semester. We hosted a final session with the ambassadors to thank them for all of their hard work and dedication to the program. It was really rewarding to see how well the program was received both the current and incoming interns, and I learned so much about being a leader throughout this experience. As we started to reach the end of the spring semester, I worked on creating a transition document for the next Intern Creative Team to use for help as they work through setting up and running their team. I detailed the way we organized our team, and outlined the structure we followed throughout the semester and how we planned all of the events that we hosted. It was a nice way to close out the semester by looking back on what we accomplished through all of our hard work. I also provided as many recommendations and bits of advice as I could in order to help future ICTs to succeed in their endeavors. I really think that this program is an incredible initiative, and it would be incredible to see it continue to succeed in the future. Towards the end of May, I also started to read the first of two books that I set out to read as a part of this experience. It is called "The Anxious Achiever: Turn your biggest fears into your leadership superpower," by Morra Aarons-Mele, and I am excited to get further into it and begin to reflect on it in my June recap!
June Recap
As mentioned in my update from last month, I spent this month reading "The Anxious Achiever: Turn your biggest fears into your leadership superpower," by Morra Aarons-Mele. When I was deciding what resources to include in this experience, I knew that this one in particular would be very well connected to the goals that I had set. As a person who suffers from anxiety, I have dealt with the struggles that it presents in a work environment, and understand very well how it can effect my abilities to be a leader. One area of focus throughout the book in particular really resonated with me, which is the idea of "imposter syndrome." This concept is exactly what it sounds like, it is basically the inability to believe that you deserve your success or that you got where you are because of your own skills and effort. Being in the aerospace field, I am surrounded by the smartest people I have ever met basically every day of my life which has put me into that imposter mindset more times than I can count. Despite knowing that I have the knowledge and skills to be where I am, I can easily convince myself that none of that is true and I have gotten where I am today by sheer luck. This is something that I had to fight in this leadership position that I took on, as I had to prove to myself that I had earned the position that I was given and I was more than capable of being successful. Working through that and the tendency to overwork (or completely shutdown) due to fear of failure has not been easy, but in the end I can see how it has helped me to become a better leader.
July Recap
In wrapping up this experience, I spent the last month reading my second resource that I chose, "Lead Like a Woman: Gain Confidence, Navigate Obstacles, Empower Others," by Deborah Smith Pegues. Just like the last book, I chose this one because it relates closely to one part of my personal experiences and identity. Being a woman in a male dominated field is a heavily discussed topic, but I have not really taken much time to look into different resources that will help me to understand how I can take my best qualities as a woman and apply them in my leadership style to be successful. One theme that was present throughout this book, which I think is important to acknowledge, is that while lifting women up we must also ensure that we are not putting men down. Plenty of traits that are seen as dominant in women are also prevalent in men, and it is important to seek what both can bring to the table. With that being said, I learned a lot from this book about what qualities women often innately possess and how embracing these "stereotypically" female traits can build me into a successful leader. One trait in particular that is discussed is a woman's tendency to be emotional. This of course is a trait that men also possess, yet in the workplace, a woman's emotions can often be perceived negatively and as a weakness in a leader. The discourse in this book relating to this area helped me to realize how being "emotionally savvy" and having an understanding of one's emotions can lead to better understanding of the feelings of others, and thus an innate ability to sympathize with others. Using my emotions as a strength in leadership can allow me to support others and demonstrate compassion in ways that others may not be able to.