The Sacramento State mechanical engineering department is a launching pad for students aspiring to work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Because of a partnership with NASA, several Sac State students have taken the opportunity to intern at NASA centers all across the nation.

Amber Connor, senior mechanical engineering major, spent two summers interning with NASA’s Motivating Undergraduates in Science and Technology program at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

She said she feels like Sac State really prepared her for the work that she did with NASA.

“Everything I did in my undergrad labs were absolutely used again in the summer, so that’s pretty cool,” Connor said. “Like in my materials class, I used aluminum specimens and when I worked with NASA, it was fiber optics. It’s the same idea, just different materials.”

Although Sac State does not have an aerospace program, there are professors connected to the field. Jose Granda, professor in the mechanical engineering department, is one of them.

“Granda is huge on NASA. He’s so funny, he always has a NASA tie or a NASA jumpsuit on. I think he’s the biggest pusher,” Connor said.

Granda is a NASA Faculty Fellow and the CSUS campus director for the California Space Grant Consortium.

Through Granda’s involvement with the space grant consortium, NASA has been able to fund student projects in the field of aerospace at Sac State for the past three years.

Granda said that NASA’s student projects are very similar to the lab work that students do in their mechanical engineering classes at Sac State.

“Fortunately I have been able to develop the skills and the curriculum over the years in the areas of system dynamics and control and the areas of modeling and simulation and modeling of systems in two and three dimensions, which are the very tools that prepare students do this kind of work,” Granda said. “When a student that I send to NASA goes there, he is well prepared.”

It is through Granda that Javier Gonzalez-Rocha, senior mechanical engineering major, first heard about the program.

Granda came to Gonzalez-Rocha’s class and gave a presentation on his involvement with NASA and Gonazalez-Rocha said it really caught his attention.

Gonzalez-Rocha’s NASA internship differs from other students’ because he worked on his research project without going to a space center. Most of his research took place in the Sac State library and at Sacramento high schools. Gonzalez-Rocha researched minorities in the field of aerospace engineering and the replenishing of the aerospace workforce.

“Right now, we have a problem with the workforce,” Gonzalez-Rocha said. “Five years ago, it was expected that 50 percent of NASA management was eligible for retirement, and there’s not enough people that are going into the field to replenish the workforce.”

Gonzalez-Rocha, like many other students nationwide, is also assigned to a NASA mission. Gonzalez-Rocha’s research contribution is to NASA’s newest spacecraft called Ares. The Ares rocket is being designed to carry astronauts to space. Gonzalez-Rocha calls it the next era of space travel.

“My job as a researcher is to do some simulation and maybe point out some issues, or some problems, that there might be, being that it’s still in the design stages,” Gonzalez-Rocha said. “That’s what the purpose is, to help the student get his feet wet, have the student contribute to the work NASA is already doing.”

Working for NASA is a really nice learning experience, said Aaron Klapheck, senior mechanical engineering major.

Klapheck interned with NASA this past summer at California’s Ames Research Center. NASA’s Ames site is an aerospace research and development installation, located at the southwest end of the San Francisco Bay in Silicon Valley.

“The project I was involved in is integrating a planning software system and using that plan to create the software to a guide and control a robot, the personal exploration rover,” Klapheck said.

Klapheck connects his experience working for NASA to his success with getting a job in the engineering field. He said it gave him the confidence he needed to be able to do the kind of job he is going to school for.

Students do not need to be mechanical engineering majors to intern with NASA.

“People have the misconception that this type of administration only hires engineers,” Gonzalez-Rocha said. “Any field can go in to work for NASA; it just may not be that they are doing the technical aspect. You might be a photographer taking pictures of astronauts, training, that kind of thing.”

Based on the time commitment required and the complexity of the project, students receive a stipend for their NASA work. Some students also receive scholarships to continue their education at the university. Because of the variety of internships available through NASA, interested students should visit the NASA website for specific information on reimbursement.

“All it takes is that (students) are willing. The opportunities are there,” Granda said. “Yes, it’s possible to go to NASA and work there. Yes, you don’t have to go to another university or another big name university to be successful. It’s all on you.”

Inna Gritsak can be reached at [email protected].