The UNO Intern with an Inside Look at One of Omaha's Largest Projects

The announcement of the massive project that is bringing a streetcar back into Omaha’s downtown and midtown was made when Alianna Armstrong was a freshman in high school. The news was big, and she never would have imagined getting an up-close and personal look at the project as it’s happening.

But on a hot July day more than four and a half years later, Armstrong could be found in a hard hat, standing along a section of the newly constructed streetcar tracks in the heart of downtown.

“I feel like my main job on the site is to soak in as much information as I can,” she says.

Armstrong’s exposure to the site and all it entails is just a small portion of her summer internship with the environmental department at Kiewit Construction, the company responsible for the infrastructure portion of the streetcar project.

The experience is giving her a glimpse into one of the many possible career paths that may lie ahead for her as a student studying environmental engineering, chemistry, and environmental science.

Armstrong says her environmental passions today grew from simple childhood activities, like roller skating or playing kick the can with her friends.

“I always just wanted to be outside,” she says. “Then as I got older, it evolved into more mature hobbies like hiking and camping, and that spurred my love for the environment. When I got to college, I knew I wanted to do something with my love for the Earth.”

When it was time to apply for college and start thinking about the degree she wanted, she didn’t know there were so many possibilities involving her interest.

“I thought it was environmental science, or you go be, like, a zoologist. I thought those were the two paths,” she says with a laugh.

But environmental engineering had it all; creativity, challenges, thoughtful design of human progress.

“I wanted to do something that would be fulfilling in the long run,” she says.

“I don't want to be one of those people who hates going to my job every day. I wanted to find something that I had a passion for and that I would enjoy putting myself towards.”

Her internship experience with Kiewit, she says, is confirming that so far, she’s heading in the right direction.

Like so many students, Armstrong sees the value of gaining experience through an internship, and she says she owes a huge thanks to the Scott Scholar Program for helping her find hers.

“It was actually one of my advisors, Kaitlyn Baysa, who led me to find this opportunity. She emailed me and a fellow environmental engineer, and she was like, ‘Hey, Kiewit is wanting some people. Give me your resume,’” she says.

From there commenced a week of interviews, and admittedly, some stress. Armstrong had already applied to several other firms, too.

“When I finally got the call back, I was so excited. One of those happy crying kinds of moments.”

“Before I started at UNO, I would have been like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can't do this interview. I'm going to be so scared. I don't know what to say,’ but being in that program, being around like-minded people, taking that leadership class in the first semester, and then also being with a great board [of advisors] has kind of allowed me to become a more hireable person, if you will,” she explains.

Armstrong worked hard to earn her place as a Scott Scholar and fully understands the healthy responsibility she now holds as a student in the program. Landing an internship isn’t just an important aspect for a student’s professional development and education, but it’s also an expectation for Scott Scholars.

There were also other schools Armstrong considered for her higher education, and looking back now, she knows her experience wouldn’t have been nearly as fruitful and fulfilling as it has been so far.

“I don't think I would have an internship. Period,” she says. “I think that UNO has given me a special opportunity that if I went out of state, I wouldn't have been able to get.”

Whether she’s at Kiewit headquarters helping fill in waste data, helping roll out new company-wide employee tools, or standing along the streetcar route observing and recording potential environmental impacts, she’s seeing the many directions a future career could go.

And, after a summer of work, Kiewit offered Armstrong the opportunity to continue her internship with them part-time during the school year, too.

All that she’s learning and soaking in is thanks to her Kiewit internship advisor, Marcus.

“He'd be like, ‘Okay, look at this barrier. It needs to be moved so these cars can get through,’ or we'll be looking at the different inlets, and he's like, ‘This inlet needs to get cleaned because of the slope of this road. Everything is coming down here, so we have to put a blocker here,’” she says.

“It's such a ‘duh,’ but I didn't even think about that!” she adds. “I think that's helping me, and it's going to help me in the future because it's opening up these different avenues to different problems that I could help create solutions to that before I didn't even know existed.”

“I know what I'm doing now is what I want to do in the future,” she adds.