Who am I?

My official title is project engineer. I plan, coordinate, get people to work on particular projects, such as the Mir-Space Shuttle project, and motivate. There are a lot of smaller engineering tasks that must be done so we don't just start doing things without planning them first. That's the role that I play. I coordinate everything, such as getting the engineering team together and setting goals and milestones for them to accomplish.

Like most engineers at NASA we don't work on only one project at a time. This means that other projects also have deadlines the engineers must meet. I have to try to keep people focused on our milestones and motivated to meet them.

My Career Journey

When I was a freshman at Auburn University in Alabama I was a business major. One day I noticed this strange thing called the Placement Office. I went to check it out and realized it was a place to look for jobs. I looked at lists of companies that were hiring and what types of people they were looking for. I realized that they were all hiring engineers so I decided to check out engineering. I'd always been a good math and science student so I figured I could handle it. That was my first introduction to engineering.

After getting involved in engineering I realized it was a wonderfully interesting world. You can have a lot of fun creating things, as well as tearing them down to find out how they work. Although my first introduction to engineering was through the placement office, after studying engineering, I found that most everything in the world starts with engineering. (I'm going to hear a lot about that comment.)

After being in engineering school for two years I decided to find out what the real working world was like. (Plus, I needed the money.) I became involved in a co-op program at Lockheed in Marietta, Ga. I would basically summarize my first quarter of the co-op program as being miserable. I mostly sat around and did nothing. I had to turn in work activity reports that were very difficult to write because I hadn't done anything. I was fairly young and immature at the time and my employers may have seen that at first and were unsure of giving me much responsibility.

However, the situation improved each quarter as I became more experienced. People began to trust in my abilities to do real work and I was given more responsibilities. As I continued in the co-op program I learned what real-world engineering was really about. I think co-op programs, in general, have gotten a lot better because the students we work with here at NASA Ames actually do real work and they are more mature than I was at that age.

I wouldn't say my educational experience was easy. Auburn has a good engineering program so it was challenging. As far as a career, I started out in a really good program at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale, Calif. They had a mentoring program called the Graduate Engineering Program (GEP) where you went through six-week rotations with different organizations and then decided where you wanted to land. There were experienced engineers I could approach and talk with who had different backgrounds and experiences; this helped a lot in the transition from theoretical studies to real-world applications.

There is a lot more information available today about engineering and what engineers do than what I was exposed to while growing up. I had to learn about engineering at a later age because I did not have the interest in engineering early enough to grasp what it was all about.

Influences

My father is a musician and my mother is an elementary school teacher, so no one in my immediate family directed me toward engineering. (That's probably why it took me so long to get to it.) When I was growing up I played the saxophone, which I was influenced to do by my father. My mother always reminded me to do well in school. That's probably why I did well in science and math and was able to do the work necessary to stay in an engineering program.

Confidence was the number one thing that I got in school, mainly through one of my math instructors in junior high school. I was always good in math. I took a pre-algebra class in seventh grade and the instructor made me feel as if there were nothing I could not conquer in math. He was a big influence on me, as far as getting me to think.

Personal Information

I have a lot of different interests, unfortunately I don't have enough time to devote to them. My wife and I are new parents. Our baby was born July 15, 1995. When I was away from NASA for one and a half years I was in Italy working as a songwriter. Now that was an interesting and fun tour. I connected with an Italian musician who was semi-famous and I cowrote and sang two songs on his compact disc, which is now distributed in Europe. The artist's name is Attilio Casati and the CD is called "BlacKitude." The one hobby that I really enjoy the most is songwriting, but presently I don't have much time to devote to it. I like a lot of different sports, in-line skating and mountain bike riding, but I'm also pursing my M.B.A.

Likes/Dislikes About Career

In my particular career, I would say the best aspects of the job are seeing a product develop from beginning to end. We start out with an idea and work together to turn the idea into a reality. When we actually see that "real" item used in space it's really exciting. After the mission is over and the experiments are reviewed to determine if objectives were met, the hardware is critiqued on how well or not it performed in space. That's a very positive aspect of this particular job.

Another positive aspect is the really nice network of people here. We work with a lot of different people. For example, I am exposed to a lot of science as well as engineering and payloads. The payloads group is responsible for actually getting the missions into space. I experience a lot of different environments and that's a really great part of this particular job.

Like with any job, we sometimes have to deal with difficult personalities. However, I can't think of anything that is really negative about my job, except occasional schedule crunches and it gets in the way of my social life. Actually, I would like to one day work in the computer field, but I don't have enough time to learn as much about it as I would like because my job keeps me pretty busy. Although I have other interests, my job keeps me pretty focused on just one.

Preparation for Career

When I was a kid all I remember is eating a lot. I just loved to eat. But I also liked to build things. I built a couple of model airplanes and cars. I played with rockets and motorized airplanes and I really liked fireworks, too.

So, there was some foundation for a career in aerospace even if I didn't realize it. A childhood interest became a reality in my career.

Advice

If I had the opportunity to teach young people interested in becoming engineers I would tell them that the most important thing, above all else, is to learn the basics. Miracles can be created from the basics. In a basic math class for example, most people memorize numbers and formulas without taking the time to learn "how" and "why" these will be helpful throughout life.

In my opinion the purpose of school is not to get "A's," but to learn how to think. If a person learns how to think there are no limitations. Students must take the time to ask "why" and understand "why," then they can succeed in anything they want.

Most of the U.S. astronauts have advanced degrees and some have interests in the science of the experiments they are conducting/monitoring. They don't need to be told what to do at each moment. They are able to resolve problems if they happen during the mission. I think many of them see the projects not only as something scientists on Earth are trying to use to gain knowledge, but as part of an effort to help make sure the scientists gain knowledge and that the experiments return results that are useful.

My Future Plans and Goals

My long-term business goal is to become a product manager for a particular computer product, which is why I am pursuing my M.B.A. My goal at NASA is to: first, work to assure on-time delivery of Beetle and Greenhouse experiment hardware for the Shuttle/Mir project, which we are well on our way to doing; and second, to assure the success of the mouse-filter study and one day see it fly. My personal goal is to be happy, "period." That means doing my "best" for my family.