College Students Observe Government Service at Pentagon

More than a dozen college students visited the Pentagon today to get a glimpse of how the Defense Department works and to learn more about the federal government and public service.

At the Pentagon, the Air Force hosted joint panel discussions for students participating in a leadership program, put on by the Center for Excellence in Public and Government Service, which is part of the Atlanta University Center Consortium.

The students, all 16 of whom attend historically Black colleges and universities, had initially asked only for a tour of the Pentagon. But Air Force officials who fielded the request thought more could be offered.

"We understood the importance of this group and wanting to come and just learn about the military through a tour," said Daphne Brooks, with Air Force Manpower and Reserve Affairs, Office of Force Integration. "We wanted to impart more information to them so that they know all that the Department of Defense has to offer throughout the services."

What the Air Force provided, Brooks said, were two panel discussions with joint leadership representation from all the military services, including one panel on pathways to serving in the Defense Department; a tour of the building; a discussion with Alex Wagner, assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs; and a luncheon with a mentoring session by Gerald D. Curry, director of the Air Force Review Boards Agency.

"We wanted to definitely expand their exposure to the Department of Defense, to the services ... to demystify some of the thoughts behind defense work," Brooks said. "And we want them to really understand, to the fullest extent - by having that diverse panel, from diverse perspectives and career fields - to understand what they do, how they got there and to help them navigate their own career paths."

Brooks said the U.S. military, and U.S. government writ large, want to tap into a top-notch, diverse talent pool. Educating young Americans about the value of public service is one way to achieve that.

"What we do, though outreach and engagement, is try to attract and to expose and to increase propensity to serve regardless of what the path, that's always important to be able to reach all walks of life," Brooks said. "For those that we don't normally know to reach and don't know to go to, we have to seek those out as well. [With] any opportunity to do that, we need to take advantage of it."

Joshua Caldwell, a criminal justice major at Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, Georgia, and Bria Witherspoon, a political science and pre-law major at Spelman College in Atlanta, both sophomores, attended the event.

Witherspoon said she was impressed with the breadth of discussion by the leadership panel.

"I liked how they touched on not just the hard skills you need to work within the Pentagon and the military, but the soft skills as well," she said. "You need to be emotionally intelligent. You have to have empathy for people, and you have to have compassion as well."

After attaining her education, Witherspoon said she hopes to come into government service as a lawyer.

"I have an interest in working for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, as an immigration services officer, because I want to be an immigration attorney and eventually go to work for the government sector to give a voice to underrepresented groups," she said.

Caldwell said he was impressed by the stories told by panelists regarding how they came into government service.

"Everybody has a story, and that story is going to do two things: either it's going to make you who you are, or it's going to break you," he said. "These people here, it made them. It encouraged them to be something better [than] from where they came from."

After he graduates, Caldwell said he hopes to use his criminal justice degree to enroll in the police academy and work his way up to the federal level at the FBI.