Juliet's First Day on the Blog...

I have been looking forward to this session for weeks! Today was the first day of Operation SMART (Science, Math, and Relevant Technology) in the Youth Center, featuring the talented ladies of Lockheed Martin! A group of LM engineers has spent many hours compiling a full curriculum for this session, where the girls will all be working in teams to plan a Mission to Mars. I can’t wait to see how it unfolds. The past few years I’ve done my best to serve as the “resident engineer” during Operation SMART sessions, and had a ton of fun teaching and creating new lessons, but it’s beyond wonderful to have an entire group of people coming in everyday to serve as role models for the girls. The concept is awesome too- each grade level will be working to complete a different part of the project, from habitat to launch vehicle design.

To kick things off, three women from LM introduced themselves to the girls and recounted how they decided to become engineers. It was wonderful to see three different women all speak so passionately about their jobs and how rewarding it’s been to work in the aerospace industry. They were very interactive and fun, and it was great to see the girls asking questions and participating. Near the end of the session an LM volunteer lead the girls through a pretend rocket launch, and by the end of it I was definitely eager to get started on our Mars mission. Last but not least, all the girls got their pictures taken for their authentic Lockheed-Martin badges! I got all nostalgic when I found out they were getting badges, I still have my first badge from my internship with Boeing in college and it was such a big deal.

In the coming weeks, I hope the time our girls get to spend with Lockheed-Martin has the same impact on them that it had on me as a kid. I still remember a field trip I took to the Lockheed Martin facility in Littleton when I was in high school. It was then that I was sure I wanted to be a chemical engineer so I could create a better rocket fuel (I guess I do work with fuel now, just not in quite the same way!). Aerospace was undoubtedly what got me hooked on engineering as a kid, so I’m really looking forward to watching the girls progress through the next few weeks. Mars, here we come!