Long-term partnership between Hume Center, RTX creates opportunities for students

This spring, Ella Rasmussen walked across the graduation stage and right through the door as a software engineer at RTX.

It was a door that opened in part because of her participation in the workforce development program between the global aerospace and defense company and Virginia Tech.

“The [RTX Fellowship] program is the reason I always recommend that people do undergraduate research,” said Rasmussen, who graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science and secure computing. “I had never worked on anything that moved before. My classes at Virginia Tech were almost entirely software engineering focused. So if I hadn’t taken the chance to work on something different through this program, I might not have found out that this is what I’m passionate about.”

Students across seven cohorts have gained such critical experience through the RTX Fellowship Program, including 15 who participated in internships through the program this summer. Offered through the Hume Center for National Security and Technology, the program has seen 23 students go on to careers with RTX after graduating.

The Hume Center is housed within the Virginia Tech National Security Institute and serves as the hub for national security-focused experiential learning and workforce development at the university.

“The program with RTX has been vital for Hume Center students, providing them with hands-on experiences tackling real world national security challenges and preparing them to enter the national security workforce with RTX,” said Ehren Hill, director of education and outreach at the National Security Institute. “Over the long term, this program has built a pipeline of highly skilled graduates who not only advance the Hume Center’s mission but also benefit from mentorship, applied research, and career opportunities that set them apart in the workforce.”

The fellowship, which started its seventh year this fall, was the first workforce development program established at the Hume Center and aligns with the center’s mission to cultivate the next generation of national security leaders by developing and executing research and experiential learning opportunities. It offers students lectures, seminars, research stipends and undergraduate research positions, as well as a guaranteed summer internship with RTX.

“There have been some changes over the years, but this program was truly one of the building blocks of the Hume Center’s workforce development effort,” said Tiasha Khan, program manager with the Hume Center. “From that model of workforce development program came a lot of the other ones that we have to date with the Hume Center.”

For Rasmussen, the program gave her the opportunity to participate in research on Virginia Tech’s autonomous vehicles team, which competes with universities across the country to build autonomous air and ground vehicles. Rasmussen served as the team’s lead during her senior year, which she said helped her expand her skill set beyond what she’d learned in a traditional classroom setting.

“Being in charge of the team taught me so many of the things that people would call soft skills, but are so important when you are working a job and not in the classroom,” Rasmussen said. “Ordering parts, creating a timeline, communicating with different types of engineers on the team and also with our project managers and sponsors - those are all things I had never done in class but now I do all the time at work.”

Along with workforce development, the program has enabled the Hume Center and National Security Institute to expand their relationship with RTX. This includes joint research initiatives between university faculty and RTX and offering more broad student opportunities, such as the East Coast RTX Autonomous Vehicles Competition at the Virginia Tech Drone Park in April 2024.