By Bob Granath
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida
After retiring from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, five NASA women engineers are sharing their experiences and giving back to the Space Coast community by mentoring young women from fourth grade through college seniors.
Following a mentoring event with girls from low socioeconomic backgrounds in the Tampa area, Rita Willcoxon and Roselle Hanson, discovered that many were unfamiliar with professions in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.
That triggered an idea to reach out to students with a program to demonstrate to girls at all levels what it would be like to be in a STEM career, especially engineering.
“We started asking other Kennedy retirees to share in the vision and start a program in two elementary schools to work with young women doing real hands-on activities that would simulate a career in STEM.” said Willcoxon, Kennedy’s former director of Launch Vehicle Processing. “What resulted is now called the Launch STEM Careers Project.”
According to Willcoxon, when the group first started in 2015 the goal was to reach out to schools with a high percentage of low-income families to help girls better understand all of the different types of STEM careers, to show them how much fun the work can be and to inspire more of them to go to college to pursue STEM careers.
Joining Willcoxon and Hanson in the initial effort were fellow Kennedy retirees Angie Brewer, Ruth Gardner and Maria Lopez-Tellado. They began working with students at Cambridge Elementary Magnet School in Cocoa, Florida, and Westside Elementary School in Palm Bay, Florida.
“Doctors, lawyers and many other careers often are depicted on television and engineers aren’t,” said Lopez-Telledo, Kennedy’s former chief of the Engineering Business and Integration Office. “We want to acquaint students with the fact that it’s not just working math calculations and studying things in a laboratory, but its working together in teams to design and build things, and solve problems and most important it’s a lot of fun.”
According to Gardner, Kennedy’s former deputy director of Engineering and Technology, the retiree volunteers spent two hours every other month doing hands-on activities with young women in role-playing activates.
“We had some of the students set up as project leads, others as design engineers, test engineers, launch directors and another as a range safety officer,” she said. “They quickly learned that there are many engineering fields and they wanted to know more.”
Since the Launch STEM Careers Project began, additional retirees and current Kennedy employees, as well as engineers and scientists from other Brevard county companies have joined and now over 70 now involved.
The program includes formal lesson plans to go along with the hands-on activities, such as building and launching foam rockets, designing and constructing Mars rovers out of pasta within a given budget, illustrating the difference between parallel and series circuits, as well as designing, building and testing a prosthetic dolphin tail.
“We’ve also expanded to include high school and college students,” Willcoxon said. “Through the Society of Women Engineers chapter at Florida Tech, we are assisting seniors with resume writing and job search strategies as they apply for jobs after graduation.”
Additionally, older students are helping their younger counterparts by serving as mentors during the hands-on activities.
“Some of the women majoring in different engineering disciplines at Florida Tech started the program at University Park Elementary, adjacent to the campus,” Willcoxon said. “The program also has added Satellite High School students as mentors to the seventh and eighth grade girls at DeLaura Middle School. We also plan to assist young women at the high school level write scholarship essays and college applications.”
The Launch STEM Careers Project has now grown to reach more than 170 students at six different schools with other schools on the waiting list. The group recently received a $2,500 donation from the Balda Family Foundation in Brevard County to cover material expenses.
“At the end of last school year, the teachers, principals and students provided us with positive feedback, stating that girls who participated in hands-on activities have displayed more confidence in their math and science classes,” said Hanson, Kennedy’s former technical deputy director of Engineering and Technology. “The consensus from the students is they would like to have the club more than once every other month.”
Willcoxon noted that the group is looking for more volunteers for the program in order to add additional schools that are requesting the program.
“Anyone who can give two or three hours once a year or more would help,” she said.
Current and former Kennedy civil service and contractor employees who are interested in learning more or who would like to volunteer may do so through KNOW – Kennedy Networking Opportunities for Women. Those interested should contact Joette Feeney, Kennedy’s Federal Women’s Program manager, at Joette.M.Feeney@nasa.gov.