the Viking orbiter. “Our team was responsible for processing all of the pictures from the orbiter, which arrived on large nine-track tapes, so that the scientists could decide where to land the craft.” After the Viking project, Stoehr worked briefly on the Voyager mission, then moved on to JPL’s propulsion subsection and the Galileo project, a probe to be sent to Jupiter. The young German major’s charge: translating all of the mission’s technical and legal documents into English. “The German aerospace manufacturer Messerschmitt-BölkowBlohm provided the propulsion subsystem for Galileo and they sent all of the correspondence related to the project—formal test results, failure reports, faxes, etc.—in German, which obviously wasn’t of any help to our English-speaking scientists.” After more than a decade at JPL, including five years as technical translator on the Galileo project, she left to pursue her Ph.D. in German studies at the University of Texas at Austin. A key element in that decision, she recalls, was “the day the assistant director of JPL took a day of vacation and requested that I be the person to teach him the system I had been working on. It was then that I realized I should be working with people, specifically with learners. The time had come for me to reconnect with my own passion.” Software engineer Irina Strickland ’97 spends her days at JPL coaxing information from a series of zeros and ones, a task that delights her. She joined the lab in August 2015 after 13 years of working there as a contractor for Raytheon. A mathematics major at Occidental, Strickland is now a group supervisor for instrument software and science data systems at JPL, responsible for managing the multiinstrument retrieval of the lab’s massive ground data system. She works directly with JPL scientists, programming their algorithms in order to process the data retrieved from the instruments. “Data comes down from various spacecraft pieces and we convert it into humanly readable information,” explains Strickland, who also has a master’s in engineering management from Walden University. “For example, a series of zeros and ones come down to us and after they’re processed we have information on volume mixing ratios for ozone, CO2, etc., which scientists then use for
far left: “I love programming,” says software engineer Irina Strickland ’97. “It’s great fun, and you get your own little victories every day.” left: Through the NASA Museum Alliance, Amelia Chapman ’93 provides resources to educators who want to use space exploration and scientific discovery to excite and inspire future generations of scientists.
climate studies and the like. I love programming. It’s great fun, and you get your own little victories every day.” For more than two decades—including four years at the San Diego Air and Space Museum and nearly eight years at the USC Pacific Asia Museum—Amelia Chapman ’93 has led informal education initiatives in museums. When given the opportunity to join the NASA Museum Alliance group in spring 2015, Chapman, who majored in studio arts at Oxy, didn’t hesitate. “Working in education for a typical museum, you can have an impact on a few hundred people,” she says. “Through JPL, you can reach thousands.” Informal education encompasses all of the places where people are learning outside of school, Chapman explains, and the Museum Alliance is the “front door” to NASA for individuals and organizations seeking to inspire new generations through exposure to space exploration and scientific discovery. Among the Alliance’s main tools is a public events calendar listing everything from the dates of Cassini mission events to virtual visits with science, technology, engineering, and math experts from the Goddard Space Flight Center. Chapman and her co-workers also maintain a website comprised of teaching resources, and presenting professional development opportunities to connect educators with experts throughout NASA. Chapman conducts a bit of informal education for Occidental students as well, raising awareness of her department through JPL’s on-campus career day. “I was the first non-science or engineering alumna to participate in the lab’s annual career information seminar for Occidental students,” she notes proudly. “It’s important for people to realize that there are numerous career opportunities
here in addition to the more traditional science and engineering roles.” Just as it did for Evans and Stroehr decades ago, Oxy continues to provide a launching pad for undergraduates looking to get a taste of the JPL experience. Emma Crow-Willard ’11, for instance, transferred from Bates College to Occidental after a single year so that she could work at JPL while studying geology and theater: “I was interested in looking for aliens,” she admits with a chuckle. She spent three years at JPL using images gathered from the Cassini mission probe to create a geological map of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. “Our focus was planetary bodies with the potential for life—we were looking for liquid water,” says Crow-Willard, who is now pursuing a master’s in environmental management at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. This semester, Stephanie Angulo ’19, an undeclared major from Sonoma, and Ellen Shin ’17, a mathematics major from Burbank, are interning at JPL for up to 15 hours a week as part of the Student Independent Research Program, founded in 2003 to encourage JPL scientists to mentor local college students and help them prepare for careers in science and engineering. Angulo is analyzing current alarm-system designs for the Deep Space Network operating facilities and developing potential new prototypes for future designs. “Aside from the project, the atmosphere of JPL was not what I expected it to be at all,” she blogged on the Oxy admission website. “The DSN design team is super collaborative and punny,” she added, “and emoji usage between JPLers is surprisingly high.” Ferguson wrote “The Showgirl Must Go On” in the Summer 2016 magazine. SPRING 2017 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 33