Evaluation of the United States Support Program’s Internship and Junior Professional Officer Programs

The U.S. Support Program (USSP) to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safeguards established a program of one-year paid internships for students and recent graduates. The program was in effect from 2002 until 2006 with a total of forty-one U.S. citizens and permanent residents placed in the IAEA. The USSP created a Junior Professional Officer (JPO) Program in 2005 that replaced the internship program at the IAEA. The JPO program creates opportunities for U.S. college graduates to become IAEA employees for a period of one to two years to help increase the effectiveness and efficiency of safeguards. The twenty three former and current JPOs work in varying fields such as software development, information collection and analysis, non-destructive analysis systems, and unattended monitoring systems. This paper will look at the impacts of the USSP internship and JPO program on the interns and JPOs, the U.S. government, and the IAEA. Academic backgrounds, past involvement in nuclear fields, program assessment, and post-program positions were recorded and analyzed through two studies using questionnaires sent to former interns and former and current JPOs. This paper will discuss the effects of the programs on the careers of the interns and JPOs, present the evaluations of the internship and JPO Programs, and report the recommendations for changes.