Episode 35: Carlie Zumwalt
10.17.07
: Carlie Zumwalt
(0:00) Intro
(0:20) Application deadlines for the spring and summer 2008 sessions of NASA's
Undergraduate Student Research Project → are Oct. 22, 2007, and Jan. 31, 2008, respectively.
(1:09) NASA's
50th Anniversary Essay Competition entries are due Jan. 7, 2008.
(2:26) Interview with Carlie Zumwalt. University of Texas at Austin aerospace engineering student Carlie Zumwalt says the NASA co-op experience is almost invaluable to undergraduates.
NASA Cooperative Education →
NASA Johnson Space Center Cooperative Education →
Texas Aerospace Scholars →
NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Project -- Microgravity University →
(13:33) End
Send your comments or questions to:
educationpodcast@nasa.gov
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Transcript
Deana Nunley: This is NASA Student Opportunities -- a podcast connecting high school and college students with learning opportunities inside America's space agency.
Episode 35. Oct. 17, 2007. I'm Deana Nunley.
NASA's Undergraduate Student Research Project offers students the opportunity to work alongside NASA scientists and engineers in internships at the agency's centers, laboratories and test facilities.
NASA is currently seeking applications from U.S. college students to participate in the year-round project. Applicants must be U.S. citizens at the sophomore, junior and senior level at the start of the internship, with academic majors or course concentration in engineering, mathematics, computer science, or physical or life sciences.
Students may apply for a 10-week summer session or for 15-week spring and fall sessions. The deadline for the spring 2008 session is Oct. 22, 2007. The deadline to apply for the summer 2008 session is Jan. 31, 2008.
[Music]
NASA is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an essay contest for U.S. students in fifth- through ninth-grades and under the age of 15.
Students can choose from two essay topics. The essay topics challenge students to look at NASA's impact in the past or the future. Students can describe how their daily lives have benefited from NASA technologies developed in the last 50 years, or they can look ahead to the impact of new NASA technologies in the next 50 years.
Essays will be judged on four criteria: Informed Content, Creativity and Imagination, Captivating and Inspirational, and Writing Technique.
U.S. students will be eligible for prizes including scholarships and the opportunity to attend a space shuttle launch. Each student who enters will receive a NASA Participation Certificate.
The contest is sponsored by NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program in conjunction with NASA's Office of Education. Essays are due Jan. 7, 2008.
For more information about the 50th Anniversary Essay Competition and NASA's Undergraduate Student Research Project, check out this week's show notes. Go to
www.nasa.gov/podcast, and click on the NASA Student Opportunities podcast.
[Music]
Carlie Zumwalt is a junior at the University of Texas at Austin. She plans to graduate with a bachelor's in aerospace engineering in May 2009 and then pursue a master's degree. She's been participating in NASA learning opportunities since high school, and now works as a co-op student at Johnson Space Center. Her most recent co-op assignment includes work on the Crew Exploration Vehicle, or CEV, which will ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, the moon and Mars.
How did you get involved with NASA?
Carlie Zumwalt: In my junior year of high school, I expressed some interest to my high school physics teacher about wanting to work for the space program. So she sent me an application for the High School Aerospace Scholars project. I knew I wanted to work for NASA, but I wasn't really sure how to get the job there or how to get involved. So she sent me the application. I filled it out, and I ended up getting to participate in the project. And then, from that I learned about the Reduced Gravity [Student Flight Opportunities] Program and also the co-op program that I've been able to participate in.
Deana: What would you say that you've learned as a co-op student?
Carlie: Oh, wow. I've learned so much. I learned always, of course, a lot in school. I've learned a lot about engineering, math and science, but you never really get the opportunity to put it all together into some kind of a design project. I've learned a lot about engineering from the perspective of working in the business, but I've also learned a lot about how to work with people and how to develop leadership skills inside working for an organization.
I've built a lot of skills that I think will really help me when I graduate to put me apart from other people, because I've had the opportunity of not just being an engineer in school, but also getting to be an engineer for real for NASA. And [I] get the opportunity to just work with these incredible minds that we have around here, and to really be mentored and taught by them. I think it's taught me a lot about being an engineer and what I want to be as an engineer. It's been a great opportunity, and I think it's extremely worth putting off graduating for a year and a half to have this experience. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Deana: How many semesters or rotations as a co-op student do you plan to do?
Carlie: That's a good question. I really started off just wanting to do two or three. And now that I've gotten down here, I want to explore everything there is to do here, pushing it maybe to five or six. I'm really not in any rush to graduate. I really enjoy the mentoring experience that I've gotten to be able to have down here at NASA. So it will probably end up more like five or six terms down here, but I definitely think it's worth it.
Deana: What are some of the different projects that you've supported in the different rotations that you've done as a co-op student?
Carlie: Well, this is my second rotation. My first rotation was in a branch called EP6. It's the Energy Systems Test Area. I supported the In-situ Resource Utilization, which is basically working on ways to live off the land once we get to the moon, and how do we use the moon dirt and turn it into usable energy sources for propulsion, oxygen, power and all sorts of things.
So, obviously, as a sophomore in college, [I'm] not knowledgeable enough to do anything too major on this project, but I really got an opportunity to support a lot of the initial tests for this program, and to do some mechanical engineering work and designing tests and leading these tests, conducting them.
I worked on three minor experiments for testing the ability to pump down -- [laughter] interesting, pump down -- lunar dirt in a vacuum chamber. There are a lot of issues that come up whenever you try to put dirt in a vacuum chamber. Obviously, you want to keep it clean, and you want to keep a good, safe working environment. So most of my project was working on how to develop a safe procedure and plan for pumping down a vacuum chamber with dirt.
And this semester, I work in ES3, which is Thermal Design and Analysis. I'm working on a project to do a sensitivity analysis for the CEV [Crew Exploration Vehicle] thermal protection system. I'm running a lot of math models and programming and getting to see when you put this model in space -- when you put the CEV in orbit -- what are the different temperatures, how much temperature range, does it vary through the thermal protection system, what kind of temperatures does this thing reach in orbit, and can the materials that we created to protect this system hold up on orbit.
I found those things are not ever what I had come to college to necessarily pursue for engineering. It's a lot more mechanical engineering. But I've learned so much and I've grown to almost love this more than what I had intentionally wanted to do, which is orbital mechanics. So it's been a huge learning process, just in terms of opening my eyes to a whole lot more possibilities out there, besides just what I had been focusing on when I came to college. I really love both of the experiences that I've had so far, and hopefully I'm going to go on to work in a branch called EC3, which is Crew and Thermal Systems, and maybe even robotics. So co-oping definitely gives you the ability to run the gamut of anything you want to do as an engineer and get so much experience that's almost invaluable to an undergraduate.
Deana: And along that line, do you have any thoughts that you'd want to share, to expound upon maybe, with other students who are thinking about applying for NASA learning opportunities?
Carlie: I think you can never overestimate the importance or the impact of just getting to spend a week at NASA or getting to do a whole co-op internship with NASA. There are so many people here that have been around since the beginning of the space program, since Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, since the beginning of the space shuttle program. And these people are a wealth of knowledge, and to come down here and just to be mentored by them.
And I think a lot of people are sort of put off from any kind of an internship program or a C-9 program, or Reduced Gravity, because of the amount of work that goes into it or the amount of time that it might take away from being in school. But it's just such an incredible opportunity to get to come down here and to learn, beyond what you will learn in the classroom, and to really experience things that an undergraduate degree can't offer you, and that you can really only get from being here at NASA with these people.
I think a lot of people have reservations in terms of wanting to come down here and spending all the time that we spent. But it's been extremely valuable, and I've learned so much. And I think anyone that you talk to that comes down here for any sort of a NASA program, everyone benefits from it, and no one ever regrets any kind of sacrifice they had to make to be down here or to put the work into it. I would say every person that does it is extremely satisfied and extremely enriched by the experience.
Deana: If you had to choose one highlight of your NASA experience so far, what would that be?
Carlie: That's a really hard question. It's really been, all around, an incredible experience. We hear a lot of lectures from famous astronauts and famous people in NASA, and get to take a lot of incredible tours of what's going on.
But I would probably say the highlight of my experience was my first co-op tour, working in EP6, and working on this lunar soil extraction in the vacuum chamber. It had never been anything that, prior to coming here, had really interested me. And so when I did get here and learned about it, I definitely got into the program, what was going on. And I remember one day, my mentor, I think, could tell that I was getting a little discouraged in what I was doing and I was kind of having a hard time seeing the bigger picture. The test that we were supporting was in a chamber here at NASA called Chamber A, which is this absolutely enormous chamber. They used to set the entire Apollo Command Module in there to test it. It's really an amazing site, and it's an incredible piece of engineering work.
And so, he let me actually go in there and see where we were going to be testing and look at all the systems. And I know, to someone that's not an engineer, that would sound maybe lame to them. But, for me, getting to see the big picture and getting to see what we were doing in Chamber A -- which is just, to see it is an incredible sight -- and actually to get to go in there and work on the systems, I would say, was probably the highlight of my engineering experience so far, because it really helped me not to forget what we do here at NASA -- that no matter how small our engineering tasks are or our co-op tasks are, they always support a larger program that will ultimately support a bunch of men and women getting into a space capsule and going into space. I would say that was probably the highlight of my experience so far, but there [have] definitely been a lot of great moments down here.
Deana: Do you have any advice for other students?
Carlie: Along that line I remember when I applied, thinking, "This is NASA. They're only going to want the best and the brightest, and the 4.0 GPAs and the 1600 SATs." I think you really understand that they want people who really have a passion for the work that is being done here at NASA, and they don't necessarily want the 4.0s or the kid that makes straight A's.
They really want a very well-rounded person who just has an extreme passion for being here and a love for what goes on down here, and not just [someone who] can read the books and memorize the information. So I think a lot of people get scared off by the intimidation factor of it being NASA, but don't always realize that we have co-ops here that have anything ranging from a 3.1 to probably a 4.0 GPA.
But everyone has the common thread of just loving what's being done here and being encouraged every single day by coming to work. And so, it's not so much the grades as it is the passion that you have for it and the desire to see the space program further throughout your career.
Deana: If you're interested in becoming a NASA co-op student, follow the links in this week's show notes to get more information. Go to
www.nasa.gov/podcast, and click on the NASA Student Opportunities podcast.
We want to hear from you. If you have any questions or comments about NASA learning opportunities, send an e-mail to:
educationpodcast@nasa.gov
Thanks for listening.
NASA Student Opportunities is a podcast production of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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