September 4, 2024
Dedicated professors prepared Stella Bond for her new role.
JCCC graduate Stella Bond has always wanted to be a NASA aerospace engineer. And now, she’s several steps closer!
Stella just completed the NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCCAS) program and because of her program involvement, starts a NASA internship this fall.
“My NASA internship is usually advertised to communications majors, so as an aerospace engineering major, I was a bit confused,” Stella said. “My interviewer told me that since I had completed the NCCAS program, they knew I could work hard, and that’s what they wanted.”
JCCC builds confidence in your academic abilities
Having moved to Kansas from South Dakota, Stella wanted to find a school where she could get acclimated to the community and college life. She found that at JCCC.
“My professors were fantastic,” she said. “I took Differential Equations with Dr. Brenda Edmonds and Dynamics with Susan Johnson. They both gave me the confidence to know what to do and how to figure it out if I don’t.”
The self-assurance provided by Stella’s professors meant that when an opportunity came her way, she didn’t hesitate.
“Dr. Edmonds emailed us the application for NCCAS,” she said. “It sounded interesting, and I felt like I could do it, so I applied.”
Community college students develop solutions for real-world problems
Once Stella was accepted into the NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars program, she went right to work.
The program consists of three missions spread out over several weeks, designed to help students advance their STEM abilities. The first mission is a self-paced online course, followed by a simulation in the second mission.
Stella’s final mission was an engineering design challenge. She worked with a team both online and at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. They were tasked with designing a program that included aviation and emergency services.
“We started looking into wildfire drones,” she said. “We wanted to see how we could implement new drone technology, AI, and a real firefighting system to combat wildfires.”
Once their program was complete, Stella and her team presented their findings to a team of NASA experts.
“The NASA experts looked at what we had done and asked follow-up questions,” said Stella. “The experience was a little terrifying, but so exciting.”
Next mission: NASA internship
As she was working on her final mission, she also got the news that she had been accepted as an intern for NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Exploration Station.
In this role, Stella will be inspiring the next generation of STEM and space enthusiasts. She will help plan STEM-focused programs for K-12 students and facilitate interactive workshops.
“My internship role involves a lot of event coordination,” she said. “I was excited because I do student aid work in the Financial Aid office, so I already had a lot of experience.”
Her NASA internship begins in the fall. Afterward, she will continue her studies at the University of Kansas and hopes to work in systems engineering at Gateway, NASA’s ambitious future mission to build the first space station around the Moon.
“I’d love to take what I’ve learned, both through the program and as a JCCC student, and be a part of that team,” she said.
A JCCC education is out of this world!
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