Pathways to Power
Bonneville Power Administration Offers Students Opportunities To Electrify Their Future
By Isabelle Williams, writer-editor at Bonneville Power Administration
The Bonneville Power Administration’s Pathways Internship program offers college students and recent graduates an opportunity to gain valuable electric industry experience in positions where they can make an impact.
BPA markets and sells electricity—mostly hydropower generated from Columbia River Basin dams—to Northwest electric utilities. Providing power and transmission services to the region requires dedicated industry professionals with a range of skill sets. The Pathways program helps BPA strengthen its teams and prepare the next generation for careers in the industry.
Interns work on 3-month rotations with different workgroups, such as engineering, finance, tribal affairs, energy efficiency, information technology, fish and wildlife, and policy.
Students can work part-time during the academic year or full-time, typically during the summer. They work with mentors and complete projects related to their academic career goals or fields of study.
The variety of experiences and options helped BPA internships stand out for Shayna Miller, a full-time intern in the Transmission Student Development program.
“There are so many factors that go into the final product that BPA delivers that a lot of people might not know about,” says Shayna, a civil engineering student at Portland State University. “There are so many gears that turn together, and in my internship, I get to understand the parts of transmission that work together with civil engineering.”
Shayna worked as a dental assistant for 20 years before returning to college to study civil engineering. After meeting many patients who worked at BPA and spoke highly about its student program, she decided to apply for an internship. Shayna says she’s learned civil engineering is a crucial component of transmission, including in geotechnical engineering, transportation and structural engineering. BPA offered an internship where she could expand her passion.
“BPA has departments in every discipline you can think of, so as someone in school to be a civil engineer, the transmission wasn’t the first thing that popped into my mind,” Shayna says. “But there is a lot of civil work that goes into keeping the BPA network running. So, I’ve had time with several different groups at this point. I am on my 4th rotation as an intern.”
To complete their internships, participants must complete at least 2 rotations in different workgroups, becoming familiar with the complexities of their chosen field and often components of adjacent fields of study.
While Shayna’s ambition is to eventually work as a civil engineer for BPA, she says the experiences with other departments have better prepared her for her career going forward.
“I’ve learned from so many smart people,” she says. “My mentors really took me under their wing and shared knowledge with me about the specifics of transmission and how civil engineering ties into it that you don’t always find from working in the field.”
Under these paid internships, students gain work experience and can qualify for flexible hours, tuition assistance, benefits and an avenue to becoming a federal employee after graduation.
Ayodele Idowu, BPA’s acting Transmission Student Development Program manager, says 96% of Pathway interns and recent graduates in transmission services have been hired for permanent positions. The retention rate of those employees is about 95%.
For example, the Transmission Students Development program hired 16 interns and recent graduates in 2023. Eleven transitioned to permanent positions in BPA Transmission Services as of July.
Chris McCarthy—now a full-time mechanical engineer in the BPA Transmission Line Engineering group and an internship mentor— began his internship in 2021 after already having worked with the Department of Defense.
However, even with years of working in federal agencies, Chris says the most valuable part of his transmission internship was having access to different teams and work experiences at BPA.
“I started my internship when I was already in my upper-level classes as an engineer, and I was focusing on mechanical engineering,” Chris says. “I started out in line maintenance support, so I was supporting lineworkers in a role that was extremely varied. I did everything from experiments to reviewing standards and everything in between.”
For some interns, such as mechanical engineering student Brooke Allen, the BPA internship is a first glimpse into the energy industry and the first opportunity to work in their chosen field.
Brooke—a sophomore at Boise State University—works with the mechanical engineering team for the Transmission Line Engineering group at BPA, mentoring under Chris and learning from firsthand experience in the field.
“Over the summer, I’ve gotten the chance to go on 3 or 4 trips to see different things in the field,” Brooke says. “At the beginning of the summer, I was able to watch the field crew start stringing a transmission line, so that was a really good experience.”
The process for students and recent graduates applying to BPA’s programs begins early. Internship positions are typically posted annually in late November through late December for different fields and are open to students enrolled in accredited universities with at least a half-time course load. Pathways interns and recent graduates are selected for internships in March to start in May and June.
Brooke says the experience and knowledge her internship and mentors impart are universally applicable to her field of study.
“It’s been amazing to learn how to work with people in a very different environment than you’re exposed to in college and high school,” she says. “I think having that experience is really valuable going into any field, and that is what makes internships like this so worthwhile.”
