On the Job: Ava Gawronski, BA ’26

Ava Gawronski, BA ’26, a rising senior studying criminal justice, is gaining practical skills in her field through a detective internship program at the Montgomery County Detectives Bureau. Throughout the summer, Gawronski spent time with different units including forensics and intelligence, working on everything from fingerprinting to data entry. Gawronski credits her internship with showing her a “wide scope” of what criminal justice career paths could look like. 

The Role:

Detective Intern, Montgomery County Detectives Bureau 

Describe your internship in three emojis:

🕵🏻‍♀️ (detective)

🫆 (fingerprint)

👩🏻‍💻 (laptop) 

The Day-to-Day:

Every day is different. This week specifically, I was looking at evidence and entering data I found into an Excel spreadsheet, which is pretty typical in the field, even though that was the first time I did that. With the intelligence unit, I was doing research, looking at maps of the county and looking at evidence. 

I’ve been out on a few different field trips. Next Monday, we're going to the county prison. And then the past two weeks, I was at the courthouses across the street in trials. If there's nothing in my unit, I'll go sit with another intern and see what they're doing or if they need help.

Go-to snack or drink that gets you through the day:

Definitely Celcius.

My “I nailed it” moment:

This week, I had an assignment from my lieutenant where we looked at evidence including interpreting things like serial numbers. One of the other interns helped me out and we finished in an hour or so. My lieutenant was shocked that we finished it so quickly. He was like, “Oh, if that was me, it would take like three days to finish that.”

Fit check:

Tips for the next intern:

Have fun and be yourself. It's a very male-dominated field, and at first, I felt like that would intimidate me. Certain units, like homicide, for example, would be a little bit more intimidating, but they're all very down to earth and willing to share their stories and just talk to you and figure out more about you. So definitely don't be afraid! And similarly, take advantage of the opportunities, including the different trips. They allow you to see a lot of different aspects of the field. I realized it's very different from what my friends are doing, so just try to take advantage of all the opportunities and see as much as you can.