Tiff O’Leary has a deep appreciation for the Rock Island Arsenal, and the 21-year-old has known about RIA her entire life.
O’Leary is a Rock Island, Illinois, native, and she is a 2021 Rock Island High School grad.
This summer, O’Leary has been serving as a Minority College Relations Program intern in the facilities readiness directorate for the Joint Munitions Command, headquartered at RIA.
MCRP provides opportunities to students from Historically Black Colleges, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Asian American and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges.
“I’m very happy with my placement in FR,” O’Leary said. “The people that I work with are great.
“I have learned a lot about electric vehicles,” she added. “That is what my individual project is – the integration of electric vehicles across the government-owned, government-operated sites.”
In the 2024-25 academic year, O’Leary will be a senior at Arizona State University, and her major is sustainability.
“The first question is what is sustainability? What does it mean? What is that? It’s not a common major,” O’Leary said. “Basically, the simple answer is people, planet, profit.
“You want to make sure the people are good, the planet is good, and profit, you want businesses to be able to keep going so they can keep the people and the planet good,” she added.
Brad Maas, the chief of JMC’s facilities operations division, said O’Leary has made a positive impact.
“Tiff has a fantastic desire to learn. She regularly asks pointed, intelligent questions that demonstrate her desire to learn but also demonstrate her comprehension of the information she’s received so far,” Maas said. “She shows that she is curious about things beyond the information relevant to her project. Tiff shows up to work eager to work hard and learn new things.
“She’s also exceptionally passionate about her major in sustainability, and her motivations to improve the world around her one small step at a time are apparent in how she conducts herself both in and outside of work,” Maas added.
Before becoming a MCRP intern, O’Leary, who fulfilled her general education requirements at Black Hawk College in Moline, Illinois, had never worked 40 hours a week, and the experience is preparing her for the future.
“I’m learning what working full-time is like in practice and not just in theory,” O’Leary said.
When the summer concludes, O’Leary plans to focus on her academics with the intent to eventually work for the federal government, and there’s always projects on the to-do list.
“My boyfriend and I own a house in downtown Rock Island,” O’Leary said. “It’s an old Broadway house so we spend a lot of time cleaning and planning home improvement projects.”
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