NEW CUMBERLAND, Pa. -- A U.S. Army Security Assistance Command summer hire's day is frequently filled with menial tasks that have piled up throughout the year such as filing, scanning and shredding. However, this is not always the case. Summer hires are often assigned interesting, more directly significant tasks. This is evident at the USASAC office in New Cumberland where summer hires Bryce Beard, Brittany Walden and Allison Fry work on assignments specific to their department.
Both Beard and Walden from G6 have been able to take part in their department's financial scanning project. The project ensures all hard-copy documents are retained as electronic files.
"I am in charge of quality control on the FMS (Foreign Military Sales) scanning project," said Beard, a junior at Florida Institute of Technology studying environmental science. "I verify that all documents were properly scanned in and are correctly named in the system."
"We must look at the financial statements and remove any personal information from each document," Walden, a senior at Penn State Harrisburg majoring in management and marketing, said.
In the finance department Fry, a student at Harrisburg Area Community College majoring in business with a concentration in accounting, spends her days compiling data, organizing spreadsheets, preparing documents for scanning and sending out payroll reports.
These specialized jobs can be intriguing and useful for the future, whether or not they pertain to the student's major.
"Working in finance shows me what people deal with, giving me work experience I can use later on in any field," Fry said.
Fry is not the only one who thinks the experience is what makes the job worthwhile.
"In life, every experience in learning something that you didn't know yesterday is a great one," Walden noted.
When asked what they have learned from their time as summer hires, they all mentioned the USASAC mission and process.
"The whole department works together," Fry said. "It's not separate."
"In a short time I learned that USASAC is a small part of a mission but plays a large role," Walden explained. USASAC is responsible for the Army's security assistance and foreign military sales for 145 countries around the globe and is known as "The Army's Face to the World."
Even though they may play a small role, there is no doubt these students have had an impact on their departments.
Fry's supervisor Ramona Rabuck said, "Allison has had an immediate impact on the workflow in the office. She is able to perform tasks that enable other staff members to concentrate on other tasks."
By reducing the workload and stress of their co-workers and supervisors, summer hires provide a beneficial service to USASAC by helping the organization accomplish goals more quickly and easily, according to supervisors and co-workers.
Social Sharing