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newsDecember 8, 2017 The Collegian

STEVEN SHRENKEL@AUCollegian

Ashland University officials signed an agreement last month with the Wright State Applied Re-search Corporation that will allow AU juniors and seniors to complete semester long internships with the corporation.

The agreement was a renewal of a former partnership in 2013 with the Advanced Technical Intelli-gence Center which is now run by WSARC.

Students have the option of pur-suing two tracks for the internship. They can either apply for being an intelligence analyst or opt to be a cyber security analyst.

Dr. Cindy Moseman, Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the director of the AU Intelligence Program, talked about just what made this program

so special and unique.“What is unique about this pro-

gram is they potentially offer students top secret security clear-ance,” Moseman said. “No analyst training program in the United States offers this unique opportu-nity.”

While there is the potential for applicants to gain top secret secu-rity clearance, it is no guarantee.

Potential candidates first must be a U.S. citizen with no prior records before even beginning the process to apply.

“It’s a daunting process,” Mose-man said. “I’ve seen the applica-tion and the process is amazingly long, but students who have under-gone the internship said that it was phenomenal and well worth it.”

Students then have to undergo a series of extremely thorough back-ground checks to ensure that they can be trusted with such important

information.“They will have information to

things that they don’t want shared with other governments,” Mose-man said. “They want to make sure they are very stringent in who they give that clearance to.”

The internships are open to any major, due to the demand of so many specialized positions that need to be filled in the field.

“We’ve had accountant, crimi-nal justice, political science, psy-chology and history majors all go through the program,” Moseman said. “They’re looking for a wide variety of people because there’s so many different positions and com-panies that need intelligence and cyber security analysts.”

While the internships offer the potential for experience in the field and security clearance, they come at a cost. The internships are not paid for and require the students to

pay for expenses. Even though the experience

comes at a cost, it opened the door for many opportunities to prior AU students, Moseman said.

“For current AU students that want to do the internship, you can use your financial aid to help cover the expense,” Moseman said. “Many students from the program are recruited into job positions or get jobs almost immediately after-wards.”

If students are pursuing the in-telligence analyst track, they can expect their experience from the internship to be split up into two parts.

For the first ten weeks, students will learn from highly esteemed teachers and experts in the field. The remaining weeks are dedi-cated to a hands-on project in the field, Moseman said.

Ashland has had a huge amount of success when it comes to the re-turn on the internships.

All students who have been ac-cepted into the program from AU in the past were granted top secret security clearance.

Two recent graduates of AU that went through the program now have jobs being a contractor for the FBI and working at the Drug En-forcement Agency (DEA).

AU alumni and psychology ma-jor, Nick Slinger, experienced the

benefits of the program first hand when he got the internship with the help of Moseman back in the sum-mer of 2016.

One of the former projects that he worked on during his time in the program involved helping the Day-ton Police shut down a gang.

“Through social media and soft-ware programs, they were able to locate this gang and help the police shut them down,” Moseman said. “Nick and everyone involved made a difference.”

After he had graduated, he was offered a job as a federal contractor with the FBI.

“Nick told me after the experi-ence that anyone that goes through the internship will be offered a job,” Moseman said. “He said it was just so fascinating to hear from amazing experts in the field.”

For Slinger and others, the part-nership has helped to provide a whole new way of thinking.

“The whole attitude of being in intelligence and have secure infor-mation is a different way of think-ing,” Moseman said. “It’s a great opportunity for students wanting to pursue those tracks.”

Current AU students wishing to apply for the WSARC internship can apply at any time.

Those who are interested in the internship for the summer should contact Moseman right away.

CHRISTINE JENKINSON@AUCollegian

AU was chosen to participate in the Bateman Case Study Competi-tion this year.

The Bateman Case Study is a na-tional competition that gives stu-dents the opportunity to make and put into effect a public relations campaign.

The competition team is made up of five students majoring in pub-lic relations or communications: Seniors Kathleen Foster, Morgan Badenhop and Susanna Savage, and juniors Erin Staley and Katie Dailey.

Universities make teams of four or five students and they compete by running a campaign for the same client. This is put on by the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA).

The client is called With Purpose, whose goal is to give kids with can-cer safe and effective treatment op-tions.

Senior Susanna Savage, a public relations and strategic communica-tion, health and risk communica-tion and English triple major, said, “AU has had an active chapter of PRSSA on campus for quite some time, but has never participated in the Bateman Case Study Compe-tition before. This is the first year that AU’s PRSSA has entered a team of students in the Bateman Case Study Competition.”

Savage explained how this cam-paign works.

“This year teams are develop-ing a campaign on behalf of With Purpose, to bring awareness to the necessity of safe and effective treat-ment options for children with can-

cer in America,” Savage said. “Af-ter the campaigns are over, each team writes a case study about the campaign, describing the re-search that went into planning the campaign, how the campaign was implemented, and how the cam-paign met the team’s goals and objectives. Each Bateman team will submit their case study to be judged by a group of public rela-tions professionals. Finally, three finalist teams will be selected to present their case studies in front of

the judges in person.”The AU team has not started

their campaign yet, but Savage laid out what the team will do when the time comes.

“The Bateman team will carry out an original public relations campaign for With Purpose,” Sav-age said. “We’ll start with research into With Purpose and into our target audiences. Once we have a good foundation of research, we’ll use research insights to develop a campaign that will be effective in

meeting the goals of With Purpose. We’ll implement that campaign, evaluate our success, and write our case study.”

Junior Katie Dailey is a triple ma-jor in health and risk communica-tion, public relations and strategic communication and religion.

“The end goal of this campaign is not to win the competition, but to know that I have helped to make more people aware of the orga-nization, With Purpose,” Dailey said. “The client has personally

been affected by childhood cancer having lost a son to it. After our team spoke with her personally, I would be pleased just knowing that I could help her to bring awareness to her cause in Ashland, Ohio.”

Dues must be paid in order to be a part of PRSSA.

While the team has already been formed for this year, there may be a team forming next year, according to Dailey.

The campaign will run from Feb. 15 to March 15.

Agreement allows for intelligence and cyber training internships

JUSTIN DAVIS@AUCollegian

Ashland University alumna Deb-orah Liebert Karl has made a $1 million donation to the university to fund the construction of a re-source center for students that are military veterans.

The resource center is an effort to aid with the academic and person-al needs of military veterans while they pursue their education at Ash-land university.

“(The resource center) will pro-vide for a place where veterans can come and get all of their academic and co-academic needs met,” Uni-versity President Carlos Campo said.

The facility will be equipped with offices and conference spaces, a veteran’s lounge, and two studio apartments that will allow for vet-eran students to register for classes, receive academic advising, apply for financial aid, and provide an option for transitional housing.

Although the location of the fa-cility is in the preliminary stages, administration has decided to make the brethren offices the ideal location for the construction of the resource center.

“Our current plan is to take over that building and reconstruct it,” Campo said.

However, the location is subject to change within the proceeding months.

The resource center is set to be open for commission in the fall of 2018.

Campo credits Karl’s motivation for donating for the resource center to her involvement with military services at Ohio State University, and her desire to provide the same services to military veterans at-tending her alma mater.

The university is still seeking in-put from current Ashland military students to further supply the re-source center with the resources they need.

“We’re still in the formative stag-es, we want to get some military students together and talk to them about what their needs might be,” Campo said.

Karl has an impactful history of donating to Ashland University, prior to her $1 million gift she do-nated $250,000 to renovate the tennis courts used by the AU wom-en’s tennis team.

“She funded that entirely and she gave us an endowment so that we can keep that maintained over the years,” Campo said.

Campo believes Karl’s donation for the veterans resource center will increase the university’s effort in providing aid to military stu-dents.

“We are hoping that this center will launch our greater intentional-ity,” Campo said.

In addition, an increase in univer-sity staff members with a military

background can help further the assimilation of veteran students.

“The truth is we can be better, and part of it is having experts. People that are tuned to those things,” Campo said. “We need to hire people with a background in the military, so they understand what the assimilation process en-tails.”

The resource center in its entirety allows for Ashland University to reward its military students for their service to the country.

“We have at Ashland for so long believed that our military are our heroes. These are people who have committed their lives to help pro-tect our country, so we want to honor them,” Campo said.

AU alumna donates $1 million for veteran resource center

AU participates in the Bateman Case Study Competition

BEX HUNTERThe team comes from AU’s communication department in the Center for the Arts building.