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Sanford Alumna Reaches for the Stars with NASA

Shelby Bates '10 is currently a mission plan engineer for NASA, which is a flight control team that supports the International Space Station.
She and her team are the timeline integrators for space station operations, meaning they coordinate all activities that happen on-board. Shelby, a 2014 graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) in Prescott, Arizona, said of her current assignment, “Working in flight control is definitely a neat place to be, as we are at the forefront of space travel. The science that we enable on-board benefits the entire planet!”

Immediately after her college graduation Shelby was hired by NASA to work in their Operations Planning department. During her four-year tenure, Shelby has led development teams, created new processes, and traveled internationally. While her college classes were male dominated, with about an 80% majority, Shelby has found that her teams at NASA are more evenly divided and represent a diversity that she was not initially anticipating, a trend she finds encouraging.

While at Sanford, Shelby gravitated towards courses in the STEM core, truly enjoying her math and science classes. She shared, “One thing I always appreciated about Sanford was that the education we received and the expectations to which we were held really did give us what we needed to easily mesh into a college curriculum. I had a lot less trouble than many of my classmates adjusting to the workload, and I already developed the tools that I needed to get the job done, including how to complete research, write a paper, and even find a derivative!”

We hope that when Shelby finds time to return to the area from her home in Houston that she will stop by the campus to share more stories about her exciting work.
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