I’m sure some of you have heard a version of this quote before: “In the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, large families in the U.S. sent their fifth or sixth child to work for the government or a utility company under the assumption that the later the child was born the less intelligent he/she was.” Even for most of us from the generation X (or Y or Z, whatever they are calling us these days) any mention of government or utility jobs brings visuals of diesel locomotives coughing dark soot and slowly chugging away to, well, nowhere. When was the last time you saw a glossy business school brochure highlighting how many students they place with the Bureau of Land Management or Pacific Gas & Electric? Exactly.

Is this about to change? Has it suddenly become sexy to work for the government and/or a utility company? There definitely are some signs here at the MIT Sloan School of Management that attitudes are changing. More than a handful of my classmates have accepted summer internship offers from utility companies and/or government agencies this year.

“How is this possible?” I’ve been asking myself. How can two such dissimilar worlds—the business schools that are the ultimate centers of capitalist education and the utilities and government offices that are the ultimate conservative workplaces—come together? Well, it turns out that we’re living in a new world in 2009.

Today, with $900 billion of stimulus capital being handed out, Washington, D.C. is being touted as the new Wall Street. After decades of inaction, there is suddenly urgent talk of building 220-volt electricity transmission lines all across the U.S. Today, consumers want an hour-by-hour update of their electricity consumption. Today, new business models are being talked about to get ready for carbon pricing. It’s in this environment that students from business schools are expected to thrive.

“Working at the US Department of Energy (DOE) today is like working at NASA during the Apollo program,” says Leland Cheung, a first-year Sloan student. Leland will spend his summer at the Advance Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) in Washington. ARPA-E, under the DOE umbrella, has been tasked with dispensing $400 million to companies moving advanced energy technologies toward commercialization.

Cheung, with a pre-Sloan career in the venture capital industry, hopes to get valuable exposure to the energy sector and develop his network while at ARPA-E this summer. While he does not think a full time job in the government is something he would prefer, he says “I would try to adopt and incorporate best practices from the private sector in the government to make it more attractive for bright and energetic individuals.”

Obama Administration policies seem to be making government jobs more attractive. “Obama changed the tenor of what it means to pursue an energy career with the US government,” Christina Ingersoll, a first-year Sloan student, told me. “Under Bush’s administration, I would have felt different and probably more suspicious of working for the government.” Ingersoll will spend her summer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO in the Technology Transfer Office.

Prior to starting at Sloan, she had not given any thought about working for the government. She changed her mind after talking to a faculty member at MIT Sloan and fellow MIT students. “NREL is a phenomenal place if you’re interested in renewable energy,” she says. “I knew I would work hard, but with smart interesting people. I have the chance to develop an expertise, and to have access to some of the leading scientists in the world on energy. Also, Colorado is a great location for the summer!”

Changes in regulations, including feed-in tariffs/decoupling/advance metering, seem to be making the utilities a sought-after destination for business school students. A group director at Massachusetts utility NSTAR told Pavel Gavrilov, a first-year Sloan student, that she felt change was coming due to the increase in MBAs coming through the organization. Gavrilov was one of those interested students. He has accepted a summer internship offer from NSTAR.

Gavrilov would like to see further changes at utilities. “For too long it’s been slow and steady growth as the only option for utilities and thus they just build rate base” he says. ” I think with changing regulations they are able to fulfill their shareholders needs in other ways–just look at decoupling.”

Veronica Metzner, another first-year Sloan student, agrees with Gavrilov and says that the utilities should go further. “It is critical for the utilities to asses how to best meet the needs of their customers by helping them become as energy efficient as possible while at the same time continuing to deliver sustained and respectable returns to shareholders,” says Metzner.

Metzner accepted a summer internship offer from the California’s largest utility, PG&E. She added that she always wanted to be in the energy field, but the support of MIT’s Energy Club and other campus resources helped her maintain a focus and get access to career opportunities.

Like other organizations, government agencies and utilities expect students to have a grasp of both traditional management skills and cross-disciplinary concepts. A strong focus on energy related activities and quantitative skills help immensely, Metzner and Ingersoll commented. Gavrilov on the other hand thinks that while MBAs are becoming a more important part of utilities, there’s a long way to go for most of them. To apply skills learnt and using the MBA experience to help the organizations flourish in these changing times will require some time and patience.

What remains to be seen is whether the change that seems to be getting business-school students excited about working for government agencies and utilities will continue, or whether these organizations will settle back into the conservative status quo ante. Can a bunch of motivated business school students armed with management and quantitative skills catalyze this change? Stay tuned.

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If you are a student enrolled in a MBA program these days, phrases like “Boy, your timing in going back to school has been perfect!” and/or “This is the best time to be a <fill in your standard business school career choices>” are serenaded quite often in your direction. Typical reactions to this would range from a self-congratulatory smile to a deadly stare. Ah, the wonders of summer internship recruiting season for first year MBA students!

Across most business school campuses, the months of December and January bring with them a flurry of activities: case discussions like your life depended on it, mock interviews on getting your “story” right for a career in finance, and trying to find reasons why your background in Romance languages is a great fit for a career in energy. We first-year MBA students at the MIT Sloan School of Management are no different. If you happened to stumble into Sloan’s main building any day in January you would not have missed the organized chaos of summer recruitment preparations.

With the economy in its current state, students’ anxiety levels are naturally all over the charts. I don’t yet have a quantitative picture of this spring’s recruiting season, but I have come across a range of interesting opinions and statements from students on campus. I have also looked briefly at a few trends in recruiting from past years.

The top recruiting industries at most business schools are consulting and finance. General management, operations, and marketing/sales round out the industry pools that recruit at MBA-granting schools. At MIT Sloan, there’s historically a large group of students interested in entrepreneurship as well. Students have had interesting recruiting experiences in all these industries this spring.

“In most years we would have given you an offer” was one of most common responses students got after their final round interviews at consulting firms. There is no question that internship offers in this industry are down. I went back and looked at the recruiting numbers for consulting the last time we had a recession and noticed an interesting trend. Officially the last recession started in 2001 and ended in 2003. At Sloan, consulting offers dropped from 35-40 percent of of the class in 1999 to 15-17 percent in 2003 at MIT Sloan. It took almost two years for those numbers to climb back up to earlier levels.

Recruiting for finance internships has been equally interesting. It’s a safe assumption that with the financial sector at the center of the economy’s malaise, internships would be hard to come by. Students who poured their hearts out at MIT Sloan (and other schools I presume) preparing for finance interviews found out first hand. The consensus opinion was that the internship pools at most banks have shrunk significantly. One could sense the frustration in a classmate when he saw a posting for “Career in Finances” lecture in mid-January. He said, “Let me guess: they aregoing to tell us how this is the best time to start a financial career. Same **** different day.”

Notwithstanding the lull in traditional hiring, industries recruiting for general management, operations, marketing, strategy and sales functions has been active. Some students who had their minds set on traditional MBA internships are re-evaluating their interests and strengths and are finding other avenues to learn during summer.

There has been an increasing focus at MIT Sloan on entrepreneurship in the past few years. While debates rage as to whether entrepreneurship can be taught in a classroom, students seem to believe so. Enrollment in the entrepreneurship and innovation program at MIT Sloan has been steadily increasing. Some of the students in this program are making plans to either work on their own startup in the summer or spend time at a startup to learn what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

Times may be less than optimal for us MBA students now, but there is still an abundance of optimism on campus. There is a strong belief that most industries will recover to a certain extent by the time our class graduates, in 2010. Until then most of us plan to hunker down, use our time to build a strong foundation, and smile and nod whenever someone says, “Isn’t this the best time to be in business school?”

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“You should visit us more often!” said one of our hosts during the MIT Sloan School of Management’s Massachusetts Tech Trek two weeks ago. The host’s enthusiasm was understandable—the company had just received news of a fresh round of funding in the midst of our visit. But such enthusiasm and energy (pun intended) was clearly evident at all of the firms that we visited as part of the Trek’s energy track on January 12-14, and was a welcome distraction from the economic malaise we keep reading about.

Co-sponsored by the Sloan Energy and Environment Club, the Energy track allowed our group to visit energy-related businesses in the Boston area to learn about firms in different stages and sub-sectors of the energy space. With the economic crisis in play and Barack Obama’s administration taking control, it was definitely an interesting and opportune time to be visiting these companies.

The energy firms we visited covered energy generation and transformation, efficiency and conservation, and consulting and research. In the generation space, we met with firms working on fossil-to-energy, storage, waste-to-energy and solar power. Interestingly, each is currently in different stages of development as a business entity.

Ze-gen, which started with SEED funding in 2005, utilizes a molten metal bath to vaporize construction and demolition and municipal waste to synthesis gas and electricity. Chief operating officer George McMillan said the company’s business model is based on the premise that they can produce energy cheaply even without taking into consideration any carbon offsets, tipping fees, or renewable energy credits. Ze-gen has plans to build its first commercial plant by 2012.

GreatPoint Energy is tackling the controversial problem of utilizing fossil fuels to “cleanly” produce energy. Dan Goldman, GPE’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, told our group that the advantages of GreatPoint’s process are low cost due to the lower temperature catalytic process, and an ability to capture CO2, which can be delivered for oil recovery or geological sequestration. GreatPoint is planning on starting operations on its $30 million feedstock testing facility in Somerset, MA, and signed an agreement with Datang Hyoin Electric Power Company in China to build and operate a plant that will process 1,000 tons per day of feedstock.

Innovative battery maker A123 Systems‘ technology went through multiple phases to reach its current level, said Andy Chu, director of the company’s automotive product line. Chu seemed confident that A123’s diversification into new areas including grid stabilization and airplane starter battery backups will ensure the company’s future success.

There is a small but loyal group of entrepreneurs and thought leaders in the U.S. who are advocating energy efficiency over energy generation. Advanced Electron Beams is one of these. AEB claims that its technology reduces energy usage by 40 to 90 percent in the surface sterilization, air treatment, and advanced curing industries, according to CEO Mitch Tyson. With a Fortune Global 1000 ranking behind them, AEB is seeking Series C funding to take their technology application to the next level.

Remember when Nanotechnology was the “it” word? You’ll be glad to know some of the nano materials have become commercial and are widely used now. Aspen Aerogels manufactures insulation materials that are two to eight times more thermally efficient than convention materials due to their nanoscale properties. Don Young, CEO of Aspen, told us that the firm is concentrating on reaching a reasonable earnings level for 2009 and diversifying into new segments.

The huge inflow of human and financial capital into the energy sector in recent years has necessitated the need for unambiguous information on the viability of technologies and business ideas. The Brattle Group has industry practice groups in most major traditional energy sectors and has developed expertise in pricing carbon and trading emissions. Dean Murphy, a principal at Brattle, felt the new administration should focus on controlling carbon emissions via a carbon tax rather than through the cap-and-trade program.

Lux Research, our last host on the trek, is a strategic advice firm that provides intelligence and consulting services in the nanotech, solar, power, water, and bio-sciences sectors. Lux Research analysts gather critical information by visiting and talking to firms in the specific sectors, according to president Matt Nordan. He emphasized a continuing need for critical analysis as we move to large-scale investing where the tolerance for market and technical risk is low.

Our interactions with so many energetic and exciting entrepreneurs, investors, and thought leaders rejuvenated our group. Leaving the classrooms to witness innovative technologies in person was a rejuvenating experience for me personally. We are looking forward to being part of a revolutionary energy innovation phase in our history.

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