Science Cheerleader

Meet Summer, a former Houston Texans cheerleader who now spends her days developing space flight hardware. This interview is part of a series of Science Cheerleader’s nationally recognized efforts to playfully challenge stereotypes.

SciCheer: Please tell me when/how you first became interested in engineering.

Summer: When I was a freshman in high school I watched Apollo 13 in my Earth Science class and felt immediately inspired to become an engineer at NASA.

SciCheer: What  type of engineer are you and what turned you on to this field?

Summer: I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering.  My interest in atmospheric flight and beyond fueled my desire to pursue Aerospace Engineering.

SciCheer: Do you find that your looks (or being a former cheerleader) helped or hindered your studies or professional experiences? (Were you taken seriously?)

Summer: I recall a few students and professors looking at me as if I were lost as I proceeded through the halls of the engineering building at school for the first few weeks.  At work, there was some negative reaction to the fact that my part-time job was on the sidelines of a football field.  It could have hindered me, had I allowed it but I pressed on and, in the end, I was taken seriously.  Beauty can be both a curse and an advantage in a woman’s professional life.

SciCheer: Tell me a little about your favorite courses you took to prepare for your work?

Summer: I absolutely loved learning engineering!  My favorite courses were Aerospace Propulsions, Space Dynamics, Aerospace Design, Flight Mechanics and Controls and Aircraft Accident Investigation.  Though my career has taken me in a direction in which I do not commonly use the technical specifics of these courses they prepared me in other ways.  The course work enhanced my critical thinking and problem solving ability as well taught me presentation skills and engineering professionalism.  The variety of classes really opened my eyes to previously unimaginable possibilities for a career in the engineering world.

SciCheer: Can you describe a “typical day” at work?

Summer: There is no typical day at work in my current position.  There is always something new, which I enjoy.  I spend 90% of my time in laboratories where engineers and technicians are working to develop and sustain space flight hardware containing electronics.

SciCheer: Do you have any advice for middle or high school girls who might feel torn between following one dream (cheerleading or dancing) associated with beauty or following another (science/engineering/medicine) usually associated with, well, geeks?

Summer: There is no reason why you cannot do both! Learn good time management skills and develop healthy habits (proper eating, sleeping & exercise) so you can physically, mentally and happily pursue the dual role.  These dreams can collide and create huge success for you.

SciCheer: Best cheerleading experience?

Summer: It is very difficult to choose one moment as my best cheerleading experience.  Aside from every game day performance, my best experiences lie in what I got to do off of the field as a cheerleader.  An appearance on ESPN Cold Pizza and 1 vs. 100 game show, starring in NFL Presents: Rocket Science, being a key note speaker at the 2009 Super Sci-Tech Saturday Conference and flying on a KC-135 during a mid-air refueling mission with the Texas Air National Guard are a few experiences that really stand out.

SciCheer: Best engineering experience?
My best engineering experience was watching the project I worked on for 4 years – International Space Station Crew Quarters – launch on Space Shuttle Endeavor in November 2008.  I stood with my project team as we watched Crew Quarters blast off on Endeavor into a beautiful night sky aiming for their final destination, the International Space Station, to be used by astronauts for years to come. It was what I deemed my first engineering success and best engineering experience.

SciCheer: Anything you’d like to add that you want people to know?

Summer: While I was earning my engineering degree I also earned my Private Pilot’s license. In addition to an academic scholarship that I received from Cessna Aircraft Company, I participated in pageants through the Miss Kansas Organization to earn scholarship dollars for my education.  The pageants involved interview, talent, swimsuit and evening gown competitions as well as promoting a platform.

SciCheer: What is your current position?

Summer: My position changed just under one year ago.  Formerly, I was a project engineer in the Crew and Thermal Systems Division at NASA – Johnson Space Center.  I currently work as the contractor Sustaining Engineering Lab Manager in the Avionic Systems Division.

SciCheer: Which team(s) did you cheer for and when?

Summer: Houston Texans – 2005, 2006, 2007

[Meet Summer and a dozen other Science Cheerleaders--procheerleaders-turned-scientist--as they perform live at the U.S.A. Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C., Oct 23-24. Then, back at the Science Cheerleader/Going Pro Entertainment exhibit, get their autographs and hear first-hand how they bridged two seemingly different worlds. Interested sponsors should contact darlene@sciencecheerleader.com.]

Calling all sophomores, juniors and seniors interested in space or robotics. You have until January 18th to apply to the NASA Academy. Check it out! (h/t Bart Leahy)

This ain’t yo’ daddy’s NASA no mo’.  Today, NASA launches Mission Science, a site designed specifically for teens “who have their own unique language and style,” according to this morning’s NASA press release. Teens can access real-time spacecraft data, conduct experiments with NASA scientists, find space-related summer internships, and participate in a host of social networking initiatives. And, yes, it’s also designed to showcase NASA’s vast “collection of educational resources and encourage students to study and pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.” Yes, yes, there are still shades of yo’ daddy’s NASA but this is a great start. True fact: NASA has accounts on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more. NASA, you da bomb!

From the NASA press release:
Now anyone with a Web browser can become a Martian explorer. That’s because NASA is launching a new citizen-science Web site, called “Be a Martian,” that gives people a chance to view hundreds of thousands of images gathered over decades of exploration on the Red Planet.
The site is also designed as a game with a twofold purpose: NASA and Microsoft hope it will spur interest in science and technology among students in the U.S. and around the world. It also is a “crowdsourcing” tool designed to tap visitors’ brains and help the space agency process volumes of Mars images.
“We really need the next generation of explorers,” says Michelle Viotti, director of Mars Public Outreach at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “And we’re also accomplishing something important for NASA. There’s so much data coming back from Mars. Having a wider crowd look at the data, classify it and help understand its meaning is very important.”

“So NASA and Microsoft are combining crowd-sourcing, cloud-computing, and citizen-science, all toward aligning with a web philosophy that Tim O’Reilly calls ’small pieces loosely joined,’ ” says Microsoft’s CTO of Advanced Government Technologies, Lewis Shepherd. (more…)

This is a NASA video of Sally Ride talking about being chosen as NASA’s first female astronaut, and what it was like to ride the shuttle into space. What an experience that must have been.

I had the honor of working closely with Sally Ride several years ago, first at Space.com, then when she hired me to create a middle school science competition for Imaginary Lines, Inc. (www.SallyRideScience.com), a company she founded to support the large numbers of girls and young women who are, or might become, interested in science, math, engineering and technology.

Thanks to support from founding sponsors Hasbro and Smith College, TOY Challenge was created in a few short months. (So happy to see it’s still going strong!)

TOY Challenge is based on the belief that “toys are a great way to learn about science, engineering, and the design process! As girls and boys create a toy or game, they experience engineering as a fun, creative, collaborative process, relevant to everyday life.”

Teams of middle school students work together to dream up and design new toys. Check out last year’s winners.

Registration for the 2010 Toy Challenge is open now through November 20.

Good luck! And, thanks Sally, for all you do for girls and science.

This video is clearly dated but it’s clever.  NASA SHOULD have produced this but they didn’t (the U.S. Space Foundation did). However, NASA’s moving in the right direction to become more connected with the people who fund the agency (us). Here’s Bart with a report on how NASA is keeping up with the times.

NASA is arguably the most popular and well-known agency in the U.S. federal government today. Studies by Dittmar Associates more or less confirm that the more the public knows about what the nation’s space agency does, the higher their opinion of it. However, one of the complaints I often hear is that “NASA doesn’t do enough to get out their message.”

While the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act, is looser than many federal agencies’ charters generally preventing them from marketing themselves, NASA itself restricts itself to education and outreach. That is, they will inform the public about what they’re doing through conventional channels and through educational institutions, but they will not take actions or positions that might be unwelcome by the President, who sets policy, or the Congress, which pays the bills (well, with our money).

All this said, NASA continues to do some very cool things in the field of outreach, and they are getting better at using the internet as a communication tool. More importantly, the agency is finding ways to get the public involved what it is doing. Take, for example, the “My Exploration” site launched (so to speak) by the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. (more…)

The Return of Buzz Lightyear

Thanks, John, for sharing this NASA image of the day. Disney’s space ranger Buzz Lightyear returned from space on Sept. 11, aboard space shuttle Discovery’s STS-128 mission after 15 months aboard the International Space Station. His time on the orbiting laboratory will celebrated in a ticker-tape parade together with his space station crewmates and former Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin on Oct. 2, at Walt Disney World in Florida.

While on the space station, Buzz supported NASA’s education outreach program– STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)–by creating a series of fun educational online outreach programs. Following his return, Disney is partnering with NASA to create a new online educational game and an online mission patch competition for school kids across America. NASA will fly the winning patch in space. In addition, NASA plans to announce on Oct. 2, 2009, the details of a new exciting educational competition that will give students the opportunity to design an experiment for the astronauts on the space station.

Image Credit: NASA

Thanks, Paul, for sharing your comment with us:

“Hi!  I thought you’d be interested in this story from Science@NASA: Amateur
astronomers have photographed NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft en route to an October crash landing on the Moon.  Observers say the spacecraft is surprisingly easy to photograph, and NASA hopes more amateurs will give it a try.”