Inside the office I never knew keeps us safe
Ella Bullock-Papa (she/her)
Hometown: Brentwood, TN
Major: Economics, '26
Internship: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Ella Bullock-Papa reflects on her data management internship with the Army Corps of Engineers
The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) takes security seriously. This wasn’t really a surprise: they are under the Department of Defense, and I’d filled out shockingly long clearance card applications months before my first day. What I hadn’t expected was that the TSA-style security guard on the first floor who told me my metal fork wasn’t allowed. Or the poster, by the card-scanner on the sixth floor, right before you enter USACE’s actual office space.
It has a man’s face, covered in paint, blurring into the black background. This is probably ‘the adversary’, a group often referenced in trainings and never really defined. Part of the man’s chin is covered by a gun he’s holding, pointed directly at you. In all white, choppy lettering, the sign says: “Keep Talking. We’re Listening.” At the bottom of the poster is the point: “Protect Our Information. Practice OPSEC.” It was, frankly, a little jarring.
However, the exceptional warmth of all the people at USACE, especially Dr. Josephine Axt and Jesse Morill-Winter, my supervisors, was immediately comforting. The truth is that any new internship or job is going to be pretty intimidating. Josephine and Jesse, though, went out of their way to make sure that I felt comfortable.
With Jesse’s help, I’ve been working on creating a data management framework for USACE’s Flood Risk Management team. The work has been hugely fun, and a fantastic way for me to learn about data science concepts I haven’t seen in coursework yet. On occasion, it can be easy to forget why it is important to work on such a seemingly esoteric project, or to get frustrated with bureaucratic and IT issues.
But the truth is that streamlining USACE’s work saves lives. Maybe not so much from ‘the adversary’, but from fires, earthquakes, and floods. And if you take the time to look around the office, there are details everywhere that remind you of the point of it all: service.
There are military and civilian honors tucked away on several desks for self sacrificial and exceptional service. The emergency medical kit includes substantial quantities of blood clotting powder. An older clock inside lists the digital times of San Francisco, New York, and Iraq. There are (expired) MREs on the upper shelf of the breakroom along with water purification tablets and “I survived El Nino” mugs. These are people which have worked through presidential changes, congressional mandates, wars, a pandemic, and increasingly, climate change.
