Cadet Trey Stevens had planned to\nspend part of his summer in a study abroad program in Japan and the other part\nworking with The Citadel STEM Center, but that was before the COVID\ninterruption, and Stevens found himself scrambling to come up with alternative\narrangements. Fortunately, the Virtual\nStudent Federal Service program was not one of the programs canceled this\nsummer. In fact, the program was sponsoring an internship with the Department\nof Health and Human Services (HHS), and Stevens\u2019 skills were in demand to help\ntrack COVID cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stevens\u2019 resume is impressive. Before this summer, he was double majoring in\ncomputer science and intelligence and security studies with minors in fine arts\nand cybersecurity. With the addition of\ncyber operations to the curriculum this fall, Stevens has added a third major. He is the recipient of an academic scholarship\nand, during the academic year, he volunteers at Cane Bay Middle School where he\nhelps students prepare for cyber competitions. \nHe is actively involved with the Cyber Team and the Cyber Club at The\nCitadel as well as the Gospel Choir. He\nalso has a post-graduation job lined up with the Naval Information Warfare\nCenter where his work will focus on cyber security and cyber operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not surprisingly, Stevens\u2019 schedule\nis full, and with classes this summer, interviewers for the HHS internship\nwanted to know how he would manage the competing demands on his time. \u201cI told them that whenever you have moments\nlike that, you need to take a pause and actually realize the work that you’re\ndoing and the impact of that work,\u201d he said, \u201cand that there’s always\nmotivation for you to keep on doing what you’re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stevens was one of 13 students from\nacross the country working on the HHS project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBecause of the intricacies and how\nimportant the work was, the position was actually expedited, and a small\nhandful of people and I started working on the state data quality and\nresolution enhancement team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The South Carolina team consisted\nof Stevens and a graduate student from the University of California at Los\nAngeles. Together they analyzed and\ntracked COVID data in South Carolina by zip code. As July gave way to August, Stevens and his\ncolleague from UCLA relinquished their responsibilities to another team that will\ncontinue their work. Along the way, they\nuncovered many findings about how data is reported in different states and how\noften, and they recognized some states have different levels to their data than\nothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was a great experience during\nan unfortunate time,\u201d said Stevens. \u201cThe\npandemic has put everyone into unique circumstances, and I was one of the lucky\npeople to have this opportunity to assist HHS in understanding COVID-19\ntrends.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cadet Trey Stevens had planned to spend part of his summer in a study abroad program in Japan and the other part working with The Citadel STEM Center, but that was before the COVID interruption, and Stevens found himself scrambling to come up with alternative arrangements. Fortunately, the Virtual Student Federal Service program was not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":694,"featured_media":782,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other"],"yoast_head":"\n