Q: What brought you to the Statler College of Engineering at West Virginia University?
A: After taking the classes I’d need, I started joining more clubs at USF. Through my rocketry club, I entered a CubeSat design competition, submitted a proposal, and ended up winning. That made me feel confident enough to start applying for internships. One day I sat in a coffee shop and applied to 1,000 internships — literally over 1,000 — and got rejected by all of them except NASA. NASA gave me 2 days to decide. I had to withdraw from USF and move to West Virginia — the NASA internship required me to go there, a state I’d never been in before. NASA WV Space Grant funded the NASA IV&V internship in Fairmont.
Q: You earned your bachelor's degree in aerospace and mechanical engineering here at WVU. You also were part of the Microgravity Research Team, Experimental Rocketry Team, and Amateur Radio Club, so it sounds like you were busy. How was your time at WVU?
A: Great. There were some challenges, but I pulled through. Once I started higher-level courses that involved a lot more math, my lack of preparation in high school became more apparent. Despite spending much of my time studying, I wasn't performing as well as my peers and, at one point, ended up taking a course 3 times only to finally pass by 1 point. Guidance counselors told me to stop, to change my major. But I kept going. Even when everybody was telling me to stop, I just kept going.
Marcus Fisher, who was my first NASA mentor (and also a WVU alum and former adjunct professor), laid the roadway for me to follow that I still take today into the office. He taught me how to present myself, how to have tough conversations, and how to promote new ideas to those who may be reluctant to change.