June 2017—An internship program in Afghanistan is encouraging women to seek careers in engineering and architecture while helping them to land jobs once they complete their formal education.

Mursal Naseer was an architecture student at the Civil Engineering Faculty of Kabul Polytechnic University when she joined a USAID internship program for Afghan women in engineering in January 2016. As part of the larger Engineering Support Program, internship opportunities are provided for female students enrolled in civil, mechanical, electrical or architectural engineering and related programs in their final academic years.

The skills developed through the internship program prepared Naseer for a career in project controls for a large international architecture and engineering firm. In January 2017, Naseer was hired as a project controls/cost scheduler for Tetra Tech, the implementing partner for the Engineering Support Program.

Through her training and experience as an intern, Naseer developed significant skills in project controls, including scheduling, invoicing and estimating costs for infrastructure projects.

In addition to providing Naseer with hands-on experience, her internship allowed her to become familiar with project controls as a new field of engineering and architecture and identify it as an area of significant personal interest.

“I never knew I would practice scheduling after I graduated from university,” said Naseer. “The internship program helped me find that, besides architecture design, the scheduling and cost estimation field was where I could use my competencies the best, and that I enjoyed working in this field.”

According to Steven Goitia, Tetra Tech’s project controls manager, Naseer’s talent was evident throughout the internship program. “When evaluating the practical exercises, we found that Mursal was able to grasp both scheduling and cost concepts quickly,” he said.

USAID’s Engineering Support Program runs from 2016 to 2019, succeeding the original intern support program, which ran from 2011-2016. 

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