RELEASE
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08-148
NASA Marshall Center’s Jose Matienzo Encourages Hispanic Community to Focus on Education
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – As a child, Jose Matienzo loved building paper airplanes. From the 18th floor of his apartment building in Luquillo, Puerto Rico, he would send the carefully crafted launchers out into the ocean -- seeing how far he could push them to go.
Today -- as project manager for the Launch Services Support Project Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. -- Matienzo uses that same passion for aeronautics to help NASA sail to new heights in space exploration.
Matienzo was 17 years old when he came to Alabama in 1980 from the beach village of Luquillo in northeastern Puerto Rico. Determined to learn English and continue his education, he was interested in pursuing engineering. But because he believed getting an engineering job in Puerto Rico might prove difficult, he instead enrolled in the pre-med program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
"But after viewing an autopsy in my first human anatomy class, I decided the medical field wasn't for me," Matienzo recalled. In 1981, he moved to Tuscaloosa to study engineering at the University of Alabama.
Despite the challenges of adapting to a new language and culture, Matienzo stayed in school and enrolled in NASA's co-op program at the Marshall Center in 1983. "I faced a lot of trials when I moved to Alabama," Matienzo recalled. "My English wasn't very good, and my mother passed away during my first year of college. She was my backbone, so not having her to support me through a transitional time of my life was very difficult. I also didn't have financial help for school, so I had to figure out how to come up with tuition and other expenses on my own."
Yet he stayed focused – working small jobs and using student loans to help pay for his education expenses – and earned his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering in 1985. He joined NASA as a structural engineer. Throughout his NASA career, Matienzo has assumed lead or chief engineering roles for various projects, including the International Space Station's Harmony Node 2, designed to increase the living and working space inside the space station. Today, he is project manager for Marshall's Launch Services Support Project Office -- managing a team that provides support in the certification process of multiple expendable launch vehicles – used to launch cargo into space -- for the Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
When he isn't working to put explorers and new rockets into space, Matienzo devotes time and effort to his other mission -- encouraging Hispanic youth to focus on education. He speaks to schools through NASA's student outreach programs, emphasizing the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- fields of study crucial to NASA's future missions. He's also a member of the Alabama Hispanic Association, which provides educational and other economic development assistance to Hispanic families. And he has served as chairperson and a motivational speaker for the NASA Hispanic Youth Conference, held each year to encourage Alabama's Hispanic high school students to continue their education and build interest in attending college.
"I really encourage Hispanic students to follow their dreams, no matter what difficulties they may face," Matienzo said. "There are so many opportunities and assistance programs for these kids who don't believe they can achieve their education and career goals."
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