‘They’re going to be building this program’: ATP high school interns get hands-on experience

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Austin Transit Partnership, the local government corporation in charge of the planning and implementation of light rail in Austin, is giving high school students a big learning opportunity, which in turn could help the corporation improve its plans.

Five area high school students are in the last leg of their seven-week summer internship with Austin Transit Partnership, or ATP. They’re all rising juniors and seniors who have gotten hands-on Computer-Aided Design (CAD) experience, while being introduced to the fundamentals of civil engineering, structural, transportation, and geotechnical engineering concepts through ATP’s high school internship program.

This summer marks the fifth year that ATP has offered the summer internship. This year’s group has been working on plans for the Wooldridge Square stop, and next week, they’ll present their capstone projects to pitch what they came up with during the seven weeks.

“That’s going to be interesting for the rest of our staff here to see,” said Austin Transit Partnership Senior Vice President of Engineering Alvin Livingstone. “Sometimes you might get some ideas of some things you didn’t even think about yourself. So we’re looking forward to their creativity.”

Livingstone said the internship program was designed to give students in the community the chance to “actually participate in the light rail,” and show them that there are several different opportunities within the field.

“You don’t just have to be an engineer,” Livingstone said. “You can be a planner. You could be an architect, you could be an accountant, you can be a lawyer. But this field offers so much opportunity. So it’s not just limited to the folks that want to just do science, technology, engineering and math — STEM-type projects — it’s limited to students that have… the creativity to provide that input here, because with the projects we do are pretty fun to talk about, and do, and be engaged in.”

Livingstone said offering an internship program to high school students not only gives them a “taste of the profession” to see if they like it, but it also helps build a system that builds momentum for the future.

“They’re going to be the future,” Livingstone said. “They’re going to be the ones building this program.”

The internship program has proven useful for Oliver Harrington, who was a high school intern in the summer of 2022 and is now doing a college internship with AECOM, ATP’s Delivery Partner for Austin Light Rail Phase 1.

“I’m really just trying to get as much experience as I can, learning about all kind of aspects of developing a new transit system from the ground up,” Harrington said.

“I was a member of the high school internship in ’22, so three years ago, and, you know, it was one of the most valuable experiences for me,” Harrington said. “I’m kind of like, developing my interest and passion for public transit design, and I got to meet a lot of the staff here at ATP that are truly the people, like, behind this project that are propelling it forward. That was a really pivotal, pivotal moment for me.”

Harrington is studying civil engineering at the University of Texas. He said he views his current internship as a continuation of the work he started during his high school internship at ATP.

“So now I’m back here three years later, now, you know, as a college student,” Harrington said. “I see this as a continuation of the work I started as a high school intern.”

“It’s been really interesting seeing how the project has evolved, you know, from its state three years ago, and it’s really fun to watch things move closer and closer to finally putting shovels in the ground and getting the thing built.”

Harrington said a big thing he’s been learning through his current internship is time management. He also said he’s been able to learn new things, like communication in a large organization like ATP, writing skills, and details surrounding technical engineering.

“I’m doing many different things than what I was doing as a high school student, but I feel like, very lucky that I get to take on a little more responsibility now and take ownership of, really, the things that I’m doing,” he said.

Harrington said that when he went through the high school internship program, he got validation from professionals at ATP on his work.

“One of my best memories from the high school program was when me and my team were giving our final presentation on our, kind of, design proposal for the UT station… And someone from ATP, you know, at the end of the presentation, stopped me and basically said, you know, ‘That thing that you proposed is actually one of the things that we’re thinking about proposing here,’ and it was really cool to me to think about, like, something I had come up with was basically the exact same as something that the actual professionals were thinking about.”

ATP is in its Planning, Design & Project Development phase of Austin Light Rail Phase 1. More information about Austin Light Rail and ATP can be found online at ATPTX.org.