WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- Reserve Citizen Airmen assigned to the 655th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group, 23rd and 512th Intel Squadrons participated virtually in Sinclair Community College’s “Chats with Cyber Scholars” Dec. 4, 2020. The presentation was for the college’s Scholarship for Service scholars.
The Airmen were present for two sessions out of four with approximately 38 people per session with 24 scholars with a variety of backgrounds from five colleges around the nation interacting with the reservists.
Sinclair College is the first community college in the nation to be granted the Scholarship for Service in 2019. Congress signed this into law in 2002 for universities.
Focus areas for the sessions included how to get a government job, your personal career journey from beginning to where you are now at your federal agency, responsibilities and scope of work in your current position, responsibilities and scope of work of your agency overall (why a student would want to work for your agency, what makes a good fit, etc.) and your experiences gaining clearance and the federal hiring process.
Topics used in the discussions of these focus areas included what kind of activities are you allowed to do, passion for the job and serving, protect national infrastructure, U.S Air Force Reserve, where a cyber-person could be stationed, security clearances, polygraphs and applying for jobs through USA Jobs.
“This was a fantastic opportunity to do some military-civilian collaboration and it was a great recruiting tool. I think it would be worthwhile to do this again in 6-9 months,” said Col. Ricardo Baker, 655th ISR Group commander.
The 655 ISRW is an Independent Wing under the 10th Air Force, Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas, Headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, consisting of two Groups and 14 Associate Unit intelligence squadrons across seven operating locations, conducting 10 specialized missions. It is the most diverse ISR Wing in the United States Air Force, and the only ISR Wing in the USAF Reserve Command, providing every aspect of intelligence generation: acquisition, human, geographical, measurement and signal, targeting, cyber, support to special operations forces, linguistics and the Distributed Common Ground System.