An Unexpected Internship Opportunity with NASA

By Tiffany King

Senior Lily Heidger is capping off her time at the College of Coastal Georgia with an internship with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The unexpected surprise came about because of a summer research project.

Heidger will be graduating in May with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science with a concentration in sustainability, policy, and management. Last summer, she participated in the International Collaborative Multidisciplinary Investigations Through Undergraduate Research Experiences (I-CEMITURE) program hosted by Georgia Southern University. She was supposed to spend her summer at the University of Lorraine in Épinal, France to research the thermal treatment of biomass. However, due to the pandemic, the format of her research opportunity changed. She instead worked remotely with her assigned professor in France and switched her research to looking at the relationship between urban climate and sociodemographics. Although things didn’t go as planned, Heidger embraced her research experience and took advantage of the opportunity to present her summer research at the American Geophysical Union conference in New Orleans in December 2021. Heidger was presenting her research poster in a hall filled with other presenters when she was asked an unexpected question.

“I was presenting my poster and there were a bunch of people asking me questions. This one lady who had asked a question pulled me aside and asked, ‘Would you be interested in an internship with NASA?’ I was so taken aback and surprised. I said, ‘Absolutely!’ and she told me to email her to let her know when I’m free this week for an interview,” Heidger said.

Two days later, Heidger had a 10-minute interview to intern for NASA, and less than a week later, she was informed that she had gotten the internship.

“She asked if I would be interested in an environmental justice internship with NASA, which was even more confusing because you don’t think of NASA with environmental justice. I didn’t know they did anything like that.” Heidger said.

Her internship is within NASA Headquarters, specifically earth data systems. She is helping to organize NASA datasets to find data that is useful for environmental justice and different projects across NASA, such as water quality and air quality data. The goal is to make the datasets more accessible for communities. Her internship is part-time and she works remotely, allowing her to meet people from all over the US and US territories virtually who are working for NASA.

Heidger always seems to catch her family and friends off guard. First it was the research experience opportunity in France, now it’s her work with NASA.

“My dad joked, ‘Oh yea, NASA approached me in College. Nope, that never happened to me,’ They were just as amazed and proud as I was.” she said laughing. “The day I interviewed at the conference, I had two of my professors on the phone just to talk through it. Dr. Deemy (assistant professor of environmental science) kept saying ‘This is a career-changer. This is a career-maker. This is going to be awesome. Your hard work is paying off. It’s all coming together.’ They were all just so proud and excited for me.”

Her internship is giving her much to consider for her future career. She’s working with people whose jobs are what she describes as in-between areas.  

“A lot of them have research backgrounds, but they’re not specifically research and they’re not specifically in academia. They’re not politicians and aren’t writing policies. They’re in this in-between area of research and data to help influence and guide policy. I love that,” she said. “So many of these different positions are interesting to me—the different things they get to do, what they’re working on and publishing. Everybody just loves what they’re doing and they’re making progress. I can totally see myself in one of these in-between roles in the future. I don’t want to be a politician. I could be a researcher, but I want to be active and involved with progress.”

Heidger still pinches herself when she thinks about her internship. She was excited to be given the opportunity, but then worried about how she would be able to manage it all with classes. Would she have to drop some classes? Would she graduate on time?

“I could hear Dr. Deemy in the back of my mind saying ‘Take the chance!’ I’m so glad that I did. The same with the research experience over the summer and conference. Those were opportunities that were presented to me, and I took a chance,” she said.

Heidger was able to attend the conference due to funding provided by the I-CEMITURE program and degree program.  She encourages other students to take every opportunity they are given.

Heidger is still determining what she’ll do for the fall after her internship ends in May. She is considering finding a job, another internship, or graduate school—with Arizona State University as her top pick.