I am back in Provo after a very fun and successful internship at NASA / Kennedy Space Center, FL. The internship was perfect for me because the work I was able to do was meaningful and was the type of work that interested me as an organizational behavior major.

The people I worked with were fantastic and the whole experience will always be memorable.  I was able to work on developing a "corporate university" concept for Kennedy Space Center.  This required me to gain a lot of new knowledge and define a process for this to occur.  A book that I found invaluable was edited by Mark Allen.  It is called: The Next Generation of Corporate Universities.  It builds upon the earlier work of Jeanne Meister and setting a good foundation for those considering a corporate university.

In addition to reading I explored the current state of leadership development at Kennedy Space Center, explored a variety of existing initiatives related to knowledge management and other examples of internal and external learning initiatives.  As part of my work on the corporate university I met several times with senior level leadership, and was able to provide input directly to them regarding this project.

I was also able to work on projects analyzing data from change project surveys, conducting and analyzing exit interviews for KSC employees, and I evaluated a different training programs, making a presentation to the director of Human Resources. I even got to learn a little about SPSS (a very cool statistical software package).

The internship experience was so successful because I had great mentors and colleagues to work with.  This really helped me get started on the right foot and provided unique opportunities to really see how the work gets done and to participate in a variety of ways.

In addition to the job it was a fantastic experience for the Space Junkie in me.  I was able to tour several historical launch sites including the sites where the first American (Alan Shepard) was launched into space and where the first American (John Glenn) launched to orbit the earth.  I was able to see two shuttle launches and one shuttle landing with the best seats in the house.  It was a great summer.

Now I have driven the 37 hours or so back to Provo and we are getting ready for school to start next week.  I have purchased my books, and am getting everything in order.  But today we took a break and enjoyed the BYU win over Arizona for the football home opener.  It looks like another great year!