Some of America’s most brilliant engineers work in NASA’s space centers collaborating on new ideas and one EC student has received the opportunity to work with them this summer.
Mario Cabrera, aerospace engineering major, never would have imagined he would be traveling to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) Thursday through Saturday, and be working with the top aerospace engineers in the country.
“I’m really excited. It hasn’t hit yet,” Cabrera said.
“It’s going to be a good experience working with NASA engineers,”he said.
The National Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS) is an all expense paid, three-day experience where community college students have the opportunity to hear NASA speakers, get a tour of JSC and design a model rover that will be pitched to and eventually built with NASA researchers.
“They separate us into eight teams and we will be working with the engineers to design a rover. Each team designs one rover, then they are going to pitch that rover to NASA” Cabrera said.
Only the top 80 applicants were accepted, and with a vigorous application process and weeks of research and preparation, Cabrera was among the top 40 students accepted.
“Mario went through the application process and underwent a tedious selection process to be a finalist for the NASA JSC program” Arturo Hernandez, MESA director said.
“Mario showed the initiative and interest in applying for this particular opportunity, which was very competitive,”he said.
Along with the application, transcripts and a letter of recommendation were required from all applicants, as well as a personal statement and weekly assignments.
“We had to design a robotics mission to Mars. There were four assignments broken up into the budget and timeline, then the proposal, and then a drawing” Cabrera said.
“The amount of research that went into it was a lot,” he said.
Taking 13 units spring semester, Cabrera said he found it difficult to balance his research for the project and his school schedule but was somehow able to maintain good grades.
“It was tough balancing it all out but I got through it” Cabrera said.
“I made sure to have the time for my schoolwork, but there was a lot of research and it took a while,” he said.
Only 11 students from California community colleges were accepted among the 250 that applied, and with Cabrera being the only EC student attending the event, he feels proud to represent EC as a top community college.
“I feel proud to represent the students from EC” Cabrera said. “This kind of opportunity doesn’t come very often”.
Cabrera said EC students of all majors should apply to the program in the follwing years and expand their knowledge in the field of science.
“One of the most rewarding parts of my job is to see students getting rewarded for the hard work they do, particularly because opportunities like this motivate students and helps them see themselves as professionals while interacting and networking with scientists and engineers” Hernandez said.
Cabrera used the knowledge he gained in other EC classes such as physics and chemistry to help prepare him for the weekly assignments and said he believed that EC helped prepare him for such opportunities.
“This shows what a good school EC, is to prepare us for such opportunities and how high the level of education is at EC” Cabrera said.