William & Mary student Kelly Shinners ’25 is using an internship with the Air University Innovation Accelerator (AUiX) to make a real-world impact on the nation’s security and operational readiness. And her work is gaining attention at the highest levels of the U.S. Air Force.
She recently presented a customized wargaming generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) to Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall as part of the internship organized by the Whole of Government Center of Excellence (WGC).
“William & Mary deeply values the investment that the U.S. Air Force and its affiliates are making in the next generation of principled leaders,” said Kathryn H. Floyd, director of the WGC. “This talent development pipeline gives undergraduates the opportunity to lend their innovative brains to everything from climate resilience to wargaming.
“We are especially proud of Kelly and her ability to organize complex data in a way that informs strategy. Shinners, and students like her, will change this digital landscape and strengthen our tools of national security.”
Shinners, an international relations major and economics minor, focused her 2023-2024 internship on crafting a customized version of ChatGPT that focuses on wargaming, nicknamed “CHUCKGPT,” short for Comprehensive Heuristic Utility for Combat Knowledge. Shinners has created multiple versions of the GPT, with the most successful one assisting players of Kingfish ACE, a strategy and logistics-based wargame. As of May 28, three different groups of sergeants major at the Barnes Center have used CHUCKGPT with positive feedback.
“Kelly Shinners has been an incredible asset to the AUiX team. It feels like she’s been with us longer than just a few months,” said Jeremy VanEgmond, chief of the education lab at AUiX. “She has taken on various projects that are making waves at Air University, including a customized wargame GPT that’s backed by an impressive dataset and is getting attention from several leaders within the organization. Her work will be featured at the AU Symposium for AI in the showcase. I could go on, but I imagine you can connect the dots on the significance of her contribution.”
Careers and data are two of the core initiatives of the university’s Vision 2026 strategic plan, and William & Mary strives to educate for impact, creating global scholars who can apply their classroom learning to the real world, regardless of the precise subject. As a military-friendly university, this is especially true and allows for students who may not be veterans to engage with national security practitioners and veterans to engage with students as mentors or as peers.
WGC is part of the larger Military & Veteran Affairs team at the university, led by Kathleen T. Jabs, special assistant to the president for military & veteran affairs. Jabs helps coordinate and support existing military and veteran programs across the university and forges connections with external partners across military commands, corporations, veteran executives, alumni, federal programs and other universities. Together, Floyd and Jabs aim to welcome students with parents who serve like Shinners, or those who want to learn how their dreams may be possible with the military.
“William & Mary provides a broad education, especially in the first years. You take classes on a variety of subjects. Having that breadth of knowledge and experience in learning different things definitely helped me with this internship,” said Shinners. “I study international relations at W&M, a broad subject that offers diverse career paths, but I’ve always been drawn toward the Department of Defense. My dad’s military career inspired me, and AUiX was a cool opportunity to get hands-on experience on a project.”
Shinners looks forward to continuing her internship with AUiX throughout the summer and returning to Williamsburg for her senior year. She advises future students seeking these opportunities: “Apply to everything! I spent so much time doing applications for internships. Take every opportunity you can get.”
This internship is part of a larger effort at William & Mary to leverage a liberal arts and sciences approach to wargaming. Wargaming Lab, a student-led research team mentored by retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Mark T. Matthews under WGC, focuses on enabling students to conduct crisis simulation and strategy-based research by creating and playing original wargames and simulations. Recently, they developed a crisis simulation, in collaboration with the London Politica, on how AI might affect geopolitical tensions for the 2023 Future Impact Summit at the London School of Economics. Under the Security & Foreign Policy Initiative at the Global Research Institute (GRI), Kyuri Park is developing a wargame that explores U.S. elites’ perceptions of and policy response to security cooperation dynamics in the Asia-Pacific, with a focus on China’s joint military exercises with regional countries.
WGC bridges the gap between academia and national security, bringing education and opportunities to those at every level, from students to seasoned military and public policy leaders. The recent $500,000 congressional appropriation for WGC’s National Security Internship Program will support more opportunities, where students can gain hands-on involvement in the field like Shinners.
Learn more about WGC and its programs on the center’s website.