Sandia welcomes 1,000 new interns

  • Published
  • By Bud Cordova
  • Nucleus writer
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. --  Interns explored job opportunities and New Mexico culture June 9 at the Sandia National Laboratories intern welcome party at Hardin Field.

"This is mainly a recruiting event to show them what Sandia and New Mexico have to offer," said student intern program coordinator Annie Hanawalt.

Sandia has more than 1,000 interns and many are from out of state.  The interns are college and high school students. The students assist with research over the course of their internship at SNL.

Some of the students are interns for the summer only, while others intern year around.

"This is a really cool event to see how many interns there are (at Sandia)," said student intern from Houston, Texas, Naomi Deneke.

The event was 1 to 3 p.m. and had local food trucks featuring New Mexico cuisine for interns to try.

SNL also hosted local Native American dancers and drummers to highlight the cultural appeal of New Mexico.

"This really was a team effort to organize from Sandia to Kirtland Air Force Base to the local community," Hanawalt said.

Interns also got to visit booths hosted by groups inside Sandia showing different opportunities for career research.

Interns could also play games such as lean six sigma, a game of collaborative effort to reduce production waste and manage time skills, baseball toss, volleyball and more to win prize

"I grew up here but I go to school at Texas Tech, and this is my first internship. I hope to have many more here," said student intern Amando Vigil.