We reached out to the high school interns over the summer, and many wrote back to tell us in their own words about their experiences. We also heard from several of the supervisors and mentors who guided the interns this summer. Many interns also sent photos of their summers at work.
Travel 65 miles north of MTC’s San Francisco headquarters, 10 miles past Santa Rosa, and you will reach Sonoma County’s town of Windsor. With a population just under the size of San Francisco’s Downtown/Civic Center neighborhood, Windsor is kept running smoothly by a Public Works Department of 47 engineers, maintenance workers and other staff. Mona Ibrahim is an engineering technician for the town, and she guided Quiana Stodder through her internship in the department. They worked together to expose Stodder to a variety of projects such as utility work, land and traffic engineering, GIS mapping, AutoCAD and community outreach. Stodder was amazed by “how much things can change between the stages of design and construction,” she reported, adding that “sitting in meetings to hear about the amount of detail that goes into every project was very interesting.”
Meanwhile, an hour’s drive south of Windsor, past the wineries and hot springs of northern Napa County, Sarahi Alvarez and Emilia Garcia worked at the Napa Valley Transportation Authority (NVTA) for the months of June, July and August. The two students formed a close friendship as they shadowed NVTA staff in their parking ticket office; organized and took inventory of the onsite storage room; mastered a Google Earth project that tracked transit passengers’ origins and destinations throughout the valley; attended various staff meetings; performed a Secret Bus Rider Survey to keep tabs on bus drivers’ performances; and worked on the Vine Trail, a 47-mile bike trail that is nearly complete. “The various tasks have definitely given me a widespread insight of NVTA’s operations,” explained Garcia, whose goal is to one day open her own interior design firm that works closely with customers to build homes in transit-friendly areas. “I know that the match-up between residential homes and mass transit systems is key for commuters, and I hope to eventually play a role in all of it,” she explained.
Fatima Garcia of Solano County has had an office job before, yet her summer at Solano County Transit (SolTrans) was a far cry from that former — in her words — “boring and tedious” position. Garcia was pleasantly surprised by the diversity in the office at Soltrans, a joint powers authority that provides public transportation to the southern Solano County cities of Vallejo and Benicia. “Some challenges I faced were definitely with computer skills,” she said. “I came in with a baby’s knowledge about computers, so I was quite intimidated at first. Luckily, my mentor Mandi [Mandi Renshaw, program analyst at SolTrans] is great at teaching and didn’t mind when I came to her for help all the time.” Learning to ask for help was another hurdle. “Growing up, I was always intimidated to ask for help. However, at SolTrans they taught me that it is better to ask than to not know what you are doing. Since everything was new to me, I was forced to go out of my comfort zone,” she said. Garcia worked on updating bus stop inventories, assisting with summer marketing events, managing the SolTrans Instagram page, and developing a marketing page for the agency’s newsletter, learning valuable computer skills in Word, Excel and various transit databases along the way.
The Solano Transportation Authority (STA), headquartered in Suisun City, hosted five MTC interns this summer. Karla Castro, Marisa Mark, Victoria Scott, Jailene Taveras and Jason Yee were placed in different departments in the agency and tasked with projects such as using Google Earth to update the Solano Project Online Tracker (SPOT) project list, which provides residents with a visual representation of recently completed, active and proposed transportation projects within Solano County. Other STA intern projects included making 3-D models of proposed roadway redesigns using Google SketchUp (including road-diets, buffered bike lanes and pedestrian facilities); creating a matrix of funding types including information on relevant deadlines; and developing an original “Solano Transportation Authority 101 Information Booklet,” with each intern responsible for information about his/her own program. Taveras particularly enjoyed attending an STA Board meeting with all seven county mayors and “being able to get more communication skills” that will serve her well as she pursues her goal of majoring in computer science in college.
Across the Bay in Marin County, Forrest Gagne and Ben Pearson worked at county offices and the Transportation Authority of Marin, respectively. From editing drone video footage to auditing proposals to conducting user surveys, the tasks the two Marin students worked on were varied and significant — no mere coffee runs or data entry at these internships. “I went to a groundbreaking ceremony for the Marin-Sonoma Narrows project along San Antonio creek, where Highway 101 was being widened and moved,” Pearson explained in an email detailing his projects. “It gave me a lot of exposure to all of the people that were involved in making a project like this happen and the sheer size and cost of the project.” Fieldwork was an important component for many of the interns, who are still forming their ideal career paths and were grateful to be exposed to such a wide range of duties.
