So what would be the ultimate internship for a college student who always has marveled at the wonders of space, who is interested in computers and whose goal in life is to work for NASA? Well, what about an internship at NASA?

For Jamie Szafran, a senior from Colton, NY, being awarded that opportunity this past summer was a dream come true.

Szafran took part in a highly selective internship program at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL, which focused on exploration systems and mission control directives. She was just one of 20 interns selected from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants.

Now, it’s fairly safe to say that Szafran is a bit of an overachiever. She is the recipient of a four-year Newell Scholarship, which has paid her tuition. She serves on the Campus Rescue Squad and will become a certified emergency management technician this fall. She has worked for Potsdam’s Tomorrow’s Professional Teaching Today’s Professional About Technology (T4P2). She is registered in the College Honors program, directs the Crane Hand Bell Choir and is also a teaching assistant in the Department of Computer Science.

And, she did such an amazing job at the Kennedy Space Center, her supervisor arranged to have her return next summer for a co-op where she will attend graduate school for a semester and then work at the center in alternating semesters until she graduates. She is nearly guaranteed to be hired on as a full-time NASA employee. With the co-op, she will have the rights and salary of a full-time employee, and the center will pay for her tuition and relocation fees if she attends a school more than 100 miles away.

When she graduates in spring 2008, she’ll have earned a Bachelor of Music Studies degree and a Bachelor of Arts degree in computer science — an unlikely combination until she explains how she got there.

“I came into Potsdam as a clarinet education major, but I realized after a year of education courses I didn’t want to teach,” she said. “And I knew I was never going to make a career out of performing. But music will always be a passion in my life, and I wanted to finish what I started.”

Computer science also had interested her. She used to design Web pages in high school and had led an information technology distance-learning program.

In addition to all that, she loved learning about outer space and always dreamed of being an astronaut. “I just think it’s one of those dreams kids have,” she said. “But I still have that dream.”

Szafran garnered the help of several faculty members, including Dr. Susan Haller and Dr. Timothy Fossum in the Department of Computer Science, who wrote letters of recommendation and helped identify scholarship opportunities. They worked with Szafran to secure a scholarship funded by Potsdam alumnus Haden Land ’84, awarded to a computer science or mathematics major who is interning in the aerospace or defense industry.

“Dr. Haller and Dr. Fossum have helped me get the teaching assistantship and have mentored me every step of the way,” she said. “The Department of Computer Science is a small department that can afford to be deeply involved with the students. They have gone above and beyond what I ever could have imagined.”

Szafran hopes to one day become a systems analyst for NASA, writing code for computer programs that would propel the first mission to Mars or beyond. Interning for NASA this summer may have brought the likelihood of that career dream one step closer to reality.