The Intelligence Community College of Academic Excellence (IC-CAE) conducts every year a weeklong seminar in Washington DC, where students are exposed to the different facets of the intelligence community (IC) , visit different IC agencies, attend forums, speak with recruiters and get to participate in a completely immersive analytic simulation that is presented to intelligence community professionals at the end of the week in the National Intelligence University (NIU).
The IC-CAE had a fully packed week for us. Every day at 7:00 AM we were picked up by buses and taken to the agency we were visiting that day. Activities varied by agency, in some we got tours and in others we didn’t. Most importantly all agencies had panels with experts from the different departments of the agency who talked about their experience and then opened the floor for questions. We also got to hear from other sectors not so talked about like HR, retirement, the veteran’s office, the mental health, and disability service office and many more. As aspiring IC professionals, it was extremely insightful to hear the ins and out of the agencies as it really helped narrowing down the ones I am more interested on.
In the afternoons, once we got back from the agency visit, we had to work on the analytic simulation. For this we were broken into groups, each group representing a different IC agency. Every day we would receive new information and we had to use the intelligence cycle to analyze it and disseminate it with the end goal of creating the Presidents Daily Brief to present at the end of the week in NIU.
At the end of the week there was a recruiting event where all the 18 IC agencies were present. We had the opportunity to speak with recruiters and get a lot of information on resume building, internships, and the application and clearance process. I think my favorite activity was being able to visit the brand-new CIA museum and agency specific recruiting event in CIA headquarters.
Overall, the seminar was a positive and productive experience that has impacted my perspective and aspirations in life. I feel extremely thankful for being selected to attend and represent USF in the IC-CAE 2023 Summer seminar as this has been the most rewarding experience of my academic career.