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High School Interns Get Taste of Transportation

Interns at work
Nora Chin (left) and Kristen Yim
Kristen Yim, age 16, and Nora Chin, age 17, expanded their wardrobes this summer to include orange vests and hard hats -- required gear for their internships with San Francisco's Department of Parking and Traffic. The teenagers were among three dozen Bay Area students participating in MTC's high school internship program this summer.

Conceived by MTC's Minority Citizens Advisory Committee (MCAC), the two-year-old program targets promising, college-bound high school students who have an interest in planning or engineering.

Students selected for the eight-week internship are exposed to a variety of experiences with city and county public works agencies, public transit operators, or county planning agencies. Some students spend a majority of their time indoors, doing everything from routine office work to operating computer-aided design programs. Others work outdoors on such tasks as monitoring whether bus drivers remember to call out stops, or in the case of Kristen Yim and Nora Chin, helping to determine where to place new traffic signals and signs, and inspecting street construction work.

"The program's purpose is to help students develop an interest in transportation early on, so that eventually they will consider it a possible career option," said Dr. Roop Jindal, chairperson of MCAC, adding that this year two-thirds of the students were minorities. "MCAC members want to see this program expanded so that we will have a good representation of minorities in the management sector of transportation," he said.

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