Honors student tackles 'Summer Games' internship challenge

January 26, 2017

By Emma Alexander,
Honors Communications Intern

Unsure of how you’d like to spend your summer term? There are many options: research, classes, internships or study away programs. But not all options are created equal. Quite frankly, some are just so unique and exciting, you can’t help but share them, even if you didn’t experience them yourself.

Such is the case with Abby Lemert, a third-year Honors student from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Although she was recommended as a Student Spotlight for many other reasons, I was so intrigued by her summer experience, I knew that had to be the focal point of her story.

You see, Lemert worked for a Washington D.C.-based consulting firm called Booz Allen Hamilton. The company hires around 300 highly qualified interns for what it likes to call the “Summer Games” internship program. Interns come from dozens of schools across the country and represent every major you could imagine. From the start, interns are split into multidisciplinary teams of six or seven. They are then assigned a real-world challenge to tackle during the course of the summer. The program concludes with the “Challenge Cup,” where all teams pitch their ideas to company leaders. In the end, the best solution is declared the winner of the “Summer Games.” Better yet, the winning interns are usually hired on full-time to lead the implementation of their solution in real life.

Lemert’s specific team, which you can see pictured in the photo worthy of a movie poster, was given the challenge of supplying emergency water to disaster zones. The team was comprised of two mechanical engineers, a business major, an MBA/MPP student, an international relations major and Lemert. Now you might be wondering about what Lemert’s major is here at Purdue. It’s such a mouthful, she even apologized before explaining it to me.

“I always feel a little bad when people ask me this question because they're expecting a short, one or two-word answer and that's not what they get,” she said. “Technically, I'm majoring in multidisciplinary engineering with a self-designed concentration in foreign policy engineering. It's a mouthful, but essentially what it means is that I take the same core science, math and engineering courses as all of Purdue's engineering majors, but I get to fill up the rest of my schedule with political science, international relations and languages like Arabic.”

Lemert gets to take lots of classes she deems “cool” such as Science and Technology Policy, as well as Human Factors in Engineering. But why go through the effort to craft your own major? And why such a strange combination of classes?

“Increasingly, the challenges facing our world are problems whose solutions lie outside their own discipline,” Lemert explained. “Instead of simple policy answers to policy questions and technical answers to technical questions, the complexity of modern global challenges demands that we view each of them as networks of interwoven systems.  There's actually a huge need for people who are "bilingual"- able to speak the languages of both technology and policy.”

With such a diverse and unique skill set, I am sure Lemert was a very valuable member of her team in the “Summer Games,” but she says she was constantly impressed by the caliber of interns Booz Allen managed to pool together. In fact, she compared the atmosphere among the interns to that which she has experienced in the Honors Community.

“Picture the atmosphere of the Shreve (and now HCR) lobby— where, no matter what time of night it was, you could always find someone kind and brilliant to help you with that last homework problem. That was the atmosphere of the Summer Games.”

And when asked if she would recommend this opportunity to others, I’m sure you can already guess her response. She explained that her internship experience seems vastly different from the engineering internship experiences of her peers. Through the “Summer Games,” Lemert was able to spend her summer at our nation’s capital with 300 other interns to befriend. She says being able to learn new skills, work with people from other backgrounds and own your own project was a truly unparalleled experience. What’s more, a very high percentage of interns either return or become full-time employees after competing in the “Summer Games.”

Intrigued? Lemert is so enthusiastic about you exploring this opportunity, she’s offering her personal assistance.

“Just do it,” she said. “Seriously, the application's not hard at all. Here's the link, I even made it easy for you: http://www.boozallen.com/careers/find-your-job/graduating-students/strategic-innovation-games . Go for the positions listed in McLean, VA. It says you need to be a junior or senior, but that's not true, there were interns of all ages. Please talk to me if you're interested! My email is alemert@purdue.edu.”

Still unsure of your summer plans? This one might just be an opportunity worth exploring.