Pathways Program grooms candidates for federal careers

  • Published
  • By Amanda Burris
  • AFCEC Public Affairs
JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas --  Each year, potential Air Force engineers and leaders are found attending or graduating from colleges across the United States. As agencies within the Air Force continue to strive to achieve a quality and diverse workforce, the Air Force Civilian Service's Pathways Program has made it a goal to recognize the potential in these emerging scholars and provide them with an opportunity to pursue their talents through careers as federal employees.

The civil engineer PALACE Acquire, or PAQ Force Renewable Program, a centrally funded civilian service employment program, has been developing a strong civilian workforce by recruiting qualified students, graduates and veterans to fill various positions at Air Force installations across the continental U.S.

The program recruits candidates who are pursuing degrees or have graduated with degrees in professional fields such as civil, environmental, mechanical and electrical engineering, and offers them a two year program where they receive both formal and informal training to develop technical and management expertise, enhance problem solving skills and learn to deal effectively and ethically with change and complexity.

"It is imperative our PAQs and interns gain knowledge of the working issues at base level," said Kerry Williston, PAQ coordinator with the civil engineer career field team. "Once they graduate from our program and advance through their AF career, many will be promoted to HQ and FOA level positions where they will be engaged in making policies, procedures, and reporting requirements. If they understand the how a base operates and their mission, they will have the background knowledge needed to make those pertinent decisions."

Although the program has had much success, there has been a decline in the number of allotted slots for PAQ hires over the past few years due to funding cuts. These cuts have also resulted in the incapability to bring on any part-time interns, relying only on full-time Pathways recent graduates to fill the limited PAQ positions.

The team has been steadily making improvements to its recruiting and retention efforts and recently the program was approved for a major funding increase, capable of supporting almost 40 PAQ positions this year, including interns.

"Last year we strictly filled our engineering positions -- civil, environmental, electrical and mechanical civil engineers -- because our program has been cut so drastically in the last few years," Williston said. "We are looking at adding our community planners, architects, and reality specialists to the span this year."

Moving forward, the team is focusing efforts on force renewal requests, and on establishing and maintaining relationships with installations in need of PAQ support. In addition, the team is placing increased focus on mentoring for PAQs and supervisors to continue to draw new talent to the service.

"(The Pathways Program) has shown me the professional side of things, something that is not fully taught in academia," said Jose Castro-Rodriguez, an intern in AFCEC's Facilities Engineering Directorate, whose aim is to obtain a developmental position after he graduates from the program in December.

"One of the main advantages I have over my peers is that, thanks to this program, I now have a good glimpse of what the real world is like," Castro-Rodriguez said.