Charlene, the Engineer.
Charlene discovered her talent in science and mathematics at a young age. Looking up at the night sky had always fascinated her growing up, and upon entering Whitney High School she found herself involved in SpaceSet, the school’s team that competed in the International Space Settlement Design Competition. For four years she worked on the Human Factors team, three of which where she was the Human Factors Department Lead. Every year was a new challenge in finding new ways to allow for human colonization in space with proposal settings in the year 2040 or later. The years of hard work paid off, for her school’s team had won three-peat internationally for three years.
After graduating high school in 2004, Charlene moved on to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, finding her most enjoyable classes were in electrical engineering, structures, control systems, chemistry and math. She was involved in research with development of techniques for correcting distortions in the gamma imaging systems, requiring the use of some Java, however she found herself more at home using C++ with MATLAB.
While in college, she was a co-op for United Space Alliance, a contractor for NASA that is joint company owned by both Boeing and Lockheed Martin, located in Kennedy Space Center, FL. There she worked as a Process Support Engineer and was involved with Lean Six Sigma projects, database development for NASA’s Debris & Radar team, and assisting with process flow for activities done on the Orbiters and at the launch pad. To her, she was living her dream as she supported the launch of STS-116, -117, and -118. In 2007, during her last term as a co-op, she was awarded the QUEST Award for Performance.
Prior to graduating, Charlene went through the typical undergraduate engineer’s rite of passage of senior design where her class (read: team) were to compete in the Google Lunar X-Prize Challenge. There, Charlene was the Systems Engineering Lead defining requirements, cost and weight analysis, and stateflow diagrams using Simulink. The competition was purely in the proposal phase, and the team was invited to propose the design at the Google Lunar X-Prize Summit in France.
She graduated from the University in 2008 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Aerospace Engineering and a minor in Mathematics. In an effort to expand the horizons of her degree, Charlene decided to move from working on spacecraft to working on aircraft and accepted a position to work at Cessna Aircraft Company as an Avionics and Electrical Systems Associate Engineer. As part of the Mechanical Design group, she supported avionics and electrical equipment assembly, installation, wiring, and cockpit control for the Citation CJ4. Charlene was also involved in testing and certification of electronics for FAA compliance, and her work in the integration of an automatic flight control system earned her Cessna’s Spot Award.
When the 2008 economy downturn struck, it had hit the aerospace industry hard and aircraft manufacturers even harder. With the company faced with layoffs, Charlene took the grim outlook of the economy and found it as a source of opportunity to pursue a higher education. She is now hoping to pursue a Master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Kansas to complement her degree in Aerospace Engineering since, especially in her field, the importance of computer-based systems is becoming increasingly paramount.