The annual “Sammie” awards, handed out in the fall by the Partnership for Public Service, honor federal employees for their accomplishments. The Post is profiling the 30 finalists. The nonprofit partnership provided the names and descriptions.
Bridget Lynn Roddy
State Department
Engaged a growing number of college students through a “virtual” foreign service
The State Department dispatches people to countries all over the world, but it has tried something new during the past few years: employing student interns who stay at their universities while working on projects in distant places such as Botswana, Cyprus, India and the Marshall Islands.
These students are part of a “virtual” foreign service that has grown exponentially during the past five years under the management of Roddy, 33, the Virtual Student Foreign Service program manager.
The program started at the State Department in 2009 with 44 projects and has grown significantly to include 10 additional federal agencies, more than 300 projects annually and 650 positions, due in large part to Roddy’s success in educating students and agencies about the benefits and possibilities of virtual internships.
“In the internship world, this is very cutting edge,” said Eric Woodard, director of fellowships and internships at the Smithsonian Institution, a participating agency. “For her to manage and grow this program is a real achievement.”
During the 2014-2015 academic year, more than 3,300 students applied for a virtual internship. They have served as journalists, scientists, mathematicians, graphic designers, researchers and social media experts for a variety of agencies from the Department of Agriculture to NASA.
Adam R. Schildge. (Aaron Clamage/Partnership for Public Service)
Developed a program after Hurricane Sandy to make public transportation systems more resilient
Hurricane Sandy caused one of the worst public transportation disasters in U.S. history, flooding and damaging rail yards, train tracks, tunnels, power stations, bus depots and critical operations centers throughout the Northeast.
Congress responded with a $10.9 billion special transportation appropriation, including $3.6 billion that could be used for “resilience” grants dedicated to protecting the infrastructure that was repaired after Sandy and would be at risk of damage by natural disasters in the future.
Schildge, a relatively new FTA employee with just four years of federal experience, was put in charge of developing and carrying out a competitive grant program with these resilience funds.
Colleagues said Schildge developed a novel methodology for rating and evaluating the projects and awarding the grants. This new approach, they said, helped assess whether proposed construction projects would result in reduced damages in the event of another disaster, and also would be cost effective considering the probability of another disaster occurring.
“People riding public transportation through areas of New England and the Mid-Atlantic region will be on systems built to better endure extreme weather events,” said Matt Welbes, the FTA’s executive director.
Lucile Jones. (Aaron Clamage/Partnership for Public Service)
Lucile Jones
U.S. Geological Survey
Spurred communities and states to prepare for catastrophic earthquakes
Jones, an internationally known seismologist and science adviser for risk reduction at the USGS, is leading groundbreaking research on earthquakes and turning it into public action that can save lives and property.
Through countless interviews, public lectures and local meetings, Jones has shared her research so that communities, states and the federal government can take measures to shore up critical infrastructure and to be better prepared to respond if a major earthquake occurs.
Jones has done research on estimating the short-term probability of foreshock and aftershock sequences, which have become the basis of all earthquake advisories issued by the state of California.
With this and other scientific information on earthquakes in hand, Jones has been able to depict the likely consequences of catastrophic natural disasters. These disaster simulations include the ShakeOut scenario, which details the devastating effects of a potential southern San Andreas Fault earthquake; the ARkStorm Scenario of a California statewide winter storm; and the SAFRR Tsunami Scenario to describe the California impact of an Alaskan tsunami.Based on her work, for instance, Los Angeles is replacing the tunnel that brings water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct across the San Andreas Fault.
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