WIESBADEN, Germany - A gifted football player aiming for a career in engineering sounds like another Everett Kischer in the making.
“Am I good? I’ll leave that for everyone else to decide.”
Like the Iowa State Hall of Famer and former B-29 flight engineer, Cadet Max Jenkins will enter his final year at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point with his sights set on a career in engineering.
“I always had an interest in engineering " not only in the technical, but also the business side of things. I’m trying to get involved in as many things as possible,” Jenkins said, who is majoring in Engineering Management. “I had no idea what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a professional ball player, but once that ran its course I knew I had to choose a career. I’m looking at the long term. No matter what happens down the road, I have an engineering degree.”
That “go get’em” attitude led him to participate in the academy’s Advanced Individual Academic Development program, a program that flew Jenkins to Germany to intern with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District.
From June 19 to July 8, Jenkins worked alongside USACE program and project managers to gain real-world experience in engineering and construction, both in the office and out on construction sites.
“This has given me a lot of experience in the [construction] process and nature of the organization " dealing with the program manager to the project manager to engineering in general,” he said. “I’m also able to grasp the big picture and some of the technical terms that you don’t really learn in school.”
The development program allows students to apply what they have learned in the classroom in the real world as well as provide them with unfamiliar corporate knowledge.
“I’ve learned so much in the past three weeks that you can’t learn in a classroom,” he said. “MATOCs, JOCs, Task Orders " it’s like a whole other language to me. I had no idea how significant a role that contracting played.”
In addition to learning the paperwork that comes with project management, Jenkins also spent time in the field with engineers and construction representatives on various projects, including the U.S. Army Europe Mission Control Center and Wiesbaden Army Airfield family housing construction sites. The goal was to show him as much of the Corps’ European program as possible, said Matt Ludwig, chief of the district’s Programs Branch.
“Overall, his visit was excellent and a very valuable experience for him. We gave him a broad overview of what the Corps of Engineers is doing here and in Africa,” he said. “We took him through project management to program management to contracting to construction. We introduced him to different people and the things you go through in a foreign country to get a project completed.”
According to West Point officials, the Department of Systems Engineering sends roughly 100 cadets across the globe each summer to work with Department of Defense, Industry and academia as part of AIAD.
“It exposes cadets to the numerous organizations, both government and civilian, that directly and indirectly support our military,” according to Frank DeMaro Jr., a public affairs specialist with the Military Academy. “The Army benefits by exposing these soon-to-be officers to the numerous agencies and organizations that they would not otherwise have exposure to. Cadets benefit in that they see the tools, techniques and methodologies they hear about in the classroom practiced in an applied setting.”
The internship also provided another unique experience to Jenkins, originally from Houston, Texas, and a graduate from Langham Creek High School.
“It’s my first time out of the States so I took advantage of my weekends,” he said. “I went to Paris, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt … there are a lot of things on my list I can check off and many more to look forward to.”
With his tour of Europe at an end, Jenkins heads back to West Point to begin football camp and his final year at the military academy. In November, the Army will assign him a military occupation specialty with graduation and commissioning slated for May 2012.
“My summer began with a leadership detail. I had three days off. I came here. I have four days off and then back to school for football,” he said. “I like to keep my options open and broaden my horizons a little bit. I have no idea what’s going to happen in the future, but if you’re able to keep it broad, adapt and come up with several plans, one is bound to work out.”
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